Competition Winner

The gentleman above is John Abraham, Bollywood star and Indian supermodel. Wouldn't you just love to get your hands on every inch of his beautiful, perfectly sculpted body...

Ahem. Where was I? India ... Divine Torment ... Oh yes - COMPETITION WINNERS!

I've rolled my polyhedral dice and the winner of a copy of Divine Torment is MELISSA HEYWOOD.
T'SADE gets a copy of the Japanese edition. Oh, go on, you can have both.

Congratulations guys - hope you enjoy the read. You need to e-mail me your postal address at:

janineashbless[at]fsmail[dot]net

xxx
Janine Ashbless

Templar Prize

by
Deanna Ashford

I think I am having a few Ridley Scott moments at present. On Friday we had the amazing excerpt from Janine’s wonderful book, Divine Torment, which was described by the publisher as ‘Like Gladiator set in a mythical realm.’ Now I’m posting an excerpt from my new book Templar Prize. The story is set during the time of the Third Crusades, just three years after the events portrayed in the Ridley Scott movie Kingdom of Heaven.

Much like most women of her time the heroine, Edwina, has been forced into an unhappy loveless marriage. Her husband is in the service of King Richard the Lionheart and they accompany him on his on his quest to retake Jerusalem from the Saracens. Edwina’s husband dies unexpectedly and she is reunited with her former lover Stephen the Comte de Chalais. However the path before them is shrouded in danger and betrayal.

Storms at sea, cruel emperors, tyrant kings, renegade Knights Templar and Saracen noblemen all make their desperate situation even more perilous until even Saladin himself has a part to play in their destiny.

Comment on this post and you’ll be entered into a draw to WIN A COPY of TEMPLAR PRIZE. (Don’t forget to identify yourself somehow in your Comment.) The winner will be announced on Thursday.

To set the scene for the excerpt: Edwina, dressed as a squire, has accompanied Stephen to the Templar fortress of Sarak which is commanded by Master Bernard le Motte a fanatical man who believes any kinds of sexual contact is a perversity. Stephen and Edwina share a room and it comes to Bernard’s attention that the new arrival has an unnatural relationship with his squire. Determined to witness this for himself Bernard uses the secret tunnels in the citadel to spy on Stephen and Edwina.

‘Master,’ Gerard whispered anxiously.

‘Silence,’ Bernard hissed, his excitement rising to fever pitch. He felt his penis grow harder but studiously he tried to ignore it, concentrating on his need to bear witness to this appalling incident.

The squire was lying on his belly, his body covered by his long shirt, with only his small pert buttocks bare. Bernard watched in fascination as Stephen thrust his cock deep inside the young lad and heard him give a loud groan of pleasure. To be honest Bernard was unable to see this as clearly as he would have wished, because in the process of impaling the squire, the comte had moved and all he could see was Stephen’s muscular buttocks thrusting lewdly back and forth. Even so he was captivated by the sight of the erotic movements, finding the vision so compelling that his own shaft grew even harder until it felt as if it might explode. There was almost an animalistic air about these two people enjoying such forbidden pleasures and Bernard was so very tempted to slide his hand under his surplice and press it against his aching cock.

Soon his breathing became as laboured as that of Stephen’s, who was still energetically pumping into the willing squire. Bernard’s heart missed a beat and his fingers curled, his ragged nails digging into the stone wall as Stephen withdrew and flipped the squire over. The boy’s long shirt concealed his sex for a moment and then the comte ripped it off, revealing the surprising sight of two round firm breasts tipped by erect cherry coloured nipples. Bernard’s gaze slid down to the squire’s groin hardly able to believe it was a woman. What had possessed this knight to bring a woman, disguised as a boy, to this sacred place he thought indignantly.

Yet he could not fail to be moved by her nakedness. In truth he might have envisaged it in his youth but he had never seen a woman unclothed before and it was a magnificently inspiring sight. He began to understand how such a sinful creature might have tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden. Her long golden hair confined in a fat plait flopped across one pert breast. As she lay there smiling seductively at the comte she parted her thighs to reveal all of herself to the onlookers. Bernard swallowed and gave a soft sigh as he watched the line of wicked pink flesh opening up between her pale thighs. He so wanted to be there naked on the bed with them and he watched enthralled as Stephen eased his rigid cock back inside the woman again.

As the thrusting started, she wrapped her legs around Stephen’s lean hips and Bernard could not resist the temptation a moment longer. His hand surreptitiously reached beneath his surplice and he grabbed hold of his penis, rubbing it through the rough fabric of his breeches, while he watched the two of them rutting together.

Their pleasure appeared to rise as swiftly as his. He saw Stephen’s muscles go rigid and he emitted a loud grunt as he climaxed. That noise was followed by a sharp scream from the woman as she too came. Confusion erupted inside Bernard’s body as he felt a quite indescribable pleasure consume him. Then his own muscles tensed and his cock pulsed with a wild pumping pressure. The strange sensation was followed by a wonderful warmth and a powerful sense of release.

Unable to comprehend what had happened to him, he leant back against the far wall, shivering slightly as he became aware of a strange damp stickiness in his breeches and he realised in disgust that he had allowed himself to climax, something he had never allowed himself to do before, because self-gratification was a mortal sin in his eyes.

Yet none of this was truly his fault he told himself, it had come about because of the Comte de Chalais’s strange shameful behaviour. Bernard vowed that he would be punished for this as well as his other crimes. Turning he leant towards Gilbert. ‘Go find the strongest sleeping potion we have, put it in a jug of our finest wine and send it to the comte.’

Deanna Ashford
www.deannaashford.com

Coming Attractions

Okay, I am late. I have a good excuse. I have been up all night! Just like one of the kids! Last night I went up to exciting London where I was nominated for Writer of the Year at The Erotic Awards, for my ground breakingly exciting, disability porn, smut fest, Equal Opportunities.

And I won!

I won a huge golden cock on a plinth! I'd like to thank everyone associated with The Erotic Awards and everyone who has supported Equal Opportunities to make such a strange little book about a strange little subject a huger success than I would ever have thought.

*

I'm out of my wheelchair and crawling for her. A weird fucked-up creature dragging itself across the carpet. And, god, I really shouldn't like this so much. It's every kind of objectification. But sparks of arousal are flying all over my body. I can scarcely tell which parts of me are which. I want to scream at her for her to take me. Use me. Make me into a mere thing. I want her to stride across the floor to me and fuck me. Force herself inside me. Own me.

But I don't. I don't because even in my own zoned-out state I can tell she's lost in her own rapture. She wouldn't even hear me. 'Tell me why you're doing that,' she says, as she stares at me crawling, squirming on the floor, her voice so ragged it's barely recognisable.

'For you.'

'No, no, tell me why you have to move like that.'

I change my path and start to drag myself towards her, meeting her eyes from way down on the floor. 'Because I can't get up.'

*

Next week we have Deanna Ashford talking about her latest epic Templar Prize. Then on Wednesday Gwen Masters is here with her white coat on to talk sexy injuries. Friday means randy little Alison Tyler talking with erotic artist Eliza Castle. And possibly, at some point, photos of me with my giant golden cock.

Did I mention that it has wings?

Mathilde Madden
Award winning - no, really.

Friday Smut: Divine Torment

by Janine Ashbless


Welcome, gentle readers, to the Friday Smut slot!

On Monday this week we discussed fervent religions. On Wednesday we considered sun, sand and sex in exotic places. Fortuitously, I can continue both themes today with my 2002 novel Divine Torment, which is back in print this month (October 16th in the US). It’s actually the prequel to Burning Bright, so if you’ve read

that, then this is your chance to find out how my two heroes got themselves into such a mess – and why Veraine deals so badly with alcohol, and why Myrna is, er, "differently sane" to everyone else in the world.

If you haven’t read Burning Bright, then please let me introduce you to the original:

Divine Torment is "Like Gladiator, set in a mythical realm," according to the publishers blurb. Yeah: I like that. It’s swords ‘n’ sandals ‘n’ sex, with a big helping of scary religion on top. If you like Spartans you’ll appreciate my Irolian army men – though I wrote this long before "300" came out. Divine Torment is also a heartfelt romance set across a bitter racial divide.

The Plot: In the ancient desert temple-city of Mulhanabin, the Malia Shai awaits her destiny. She is the divine priestess of the terrifying Goddess of the Cruel Earth and millions across the Eternal Empire worship her, believing her to be the goddess Malia incarnate. But Mulhanabin is under threat from the invading Horse-eater horde that approaches across the desert, so the overlords of the Empire send a force of soldiers to occupy the city and hold it against the invaders. The leader of the occupying hosts is the rugged and brooding General Veraine. He and his men are of a different ethnic group to the inhabitants of the sacred city and he has no respect for their ‘primitive’ gods, but against his better judgement he becomes obsessed with the Malia Shai. In turn, though she has been raised to be an empty and completely passionless vessel of divine power, she becomes fascinated with this handsome stranger. Intimate contact between them is forbidden by every law of their two hostile peoples. But she is in the end the only thing he wants – and he will risk everything to have her.

Comment on this post and you’ll be entered into a draw to WIN A COPY of Divine Torment! (Don’t forget to identify yourself somehow in your Comment.) Winner(s) will be announced on Tuesday.

BONUS DRAW: I have a spare copy of the Japanese Version of Divine Torment, so if you can read Japanese – or you know someone who does and would like a smutty present – identify yourself and win!

By the way, the new cover characters look NOTHING like my heroes. Tomorrow I’m posting my Veraine Lookalike picture and he’ll be up all week in the righthand sidebar here on Lust Bites.

Here, then is an excerpt. The scene set-up: Our two protagonists have been circling each other for weeks. Veraine has been the target of a botched assassination attempt and is confined to bed with a shoulder wound, feeling sore and grouchy.

***********************************

He woke suddenly and saw the Malia Shai was sitting on the edge of the bed next to him.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ she said.

She sat so close he might have swept his good arm around her. He could smell the incense on her clothes. His stomach tightened with dismay. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to bring you this salve.’ She showed him a small pot with a wax seal. ‘It’s made from a desert plant; I thought your doctors might not have any.’ She paused. Her hair was wrapped away from sight again, her eyes calm. He might almost have imagined that fire in them as she had knelt over him on the Citadel wall. ‘Next time your wound is dressed, get them to put this on too.’

‘Were there guards on the door?’ he demanded, but he kept his voice low.

‘Yes. Two. They’re protecting you now.’

‘Oh shit.’

'They let me in. They must think I’m an unlikely assassin.’

There was a hint of humour in her voice, but he shook his head, not listening, and told her, ‘Get out of here.’

She put the pot down on the floor. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong? You’re here alone with me in my bedroom. And you walked past two witnesses to get here!’

‘So?’

He hissed in exasperation. ‘Well, I don’t know what it means among your people when a woman goes into a man’s chamber, but to an Irolian that only has one interpretation.’

She blinked. ‘What does it matter what your guards think?’

Somewhere deep inside he was disappointed. He might have been hoping for a blush or a smile or a flash of alarm – anything that acknowledge the possibility of sexual contact between them. It made him brutal. ‘What about the high priest?’ he asked. ‘How long will it take for him to hear? Get out of this room!’

She wasn’t impressed. ‘Don’t be foolish. You’re hurt. And I’m the Malia Shai – I am beyond carnal lusts.’

If he hadn’t been so angry and frustrated he might have shrugged off the unintended slight. Instead he growled, ‘Well, that must be very nice for you, priestess. Congratulations. Unfortunately I’m made of weaker flesh and for my comfort you really should leave.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her breath was sweet; warm and close enough to drive him mad. He fixed her gaze with his own. The last shreds of discretion were falling from him like leaves scorched by the desert sun.

‘Do you really want to know? I’ll explain exactly what I mean, Malia Shai, if you like.’ He kept his voice low, but he spoke with punishing precision. ‘I mean that your presence here now is giving me a most painful hard-on. I mean that I can’t think of you without wanting you, and can’t go a single hour without thinking of you. I look at your lips and I want to see them wrapped around my prick. I want your breasts in my hands and I want your nipples between my teeth. I want to feel you move beneath me as I fuck you from one end of the night to the other. I want to cover you like a stallion covers a mare. I want to hear the noises you make as you come beneath me.’

He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. ‘When you walk toward me I’m obsessed with your mouth and your breasts; when you walk away I’m overwhelmed with wanting your arse. The turn of your head makes me sweat. I want you to sit on my face and drown me. I want to fill every hole you have. I want to fill you so full of my spend that it runs out of you in rivers, and I want to make you scream and weep and beg me never to stop.

‘Does that clear up any misunderstanding between us?’ he concluded bitterly.

She stared, her face as blank as her goddess mask. ‘That’s … nonsense,’ she whispered.

He grabbed her hand and forced his fingers between hers, spreading it. ‘You don’t believe me?’ He laid her small cool palm on the centre of his chest, feeling his heartbeat hammer up into her bones. He was feverish. He dragged her hand slowly down his bare skin, over the hard breastbone, over the burning slab of his belly, through the first flecks of hair beneath his navel. The pain of his wound was throbbing through his veins and every pulse was making his cock jump and thicken. She wasn’t fighting him, but he could feel the tension in her arm. He forced her hand over the top of his belt, through the folds of linen, round the wall of his upraised thigh and finally, firmly, pressed it onto the thick curve of his cock. Hidden as it was under the tatters of his tunic, it was undeniably erect and struggling for freedom. It heaved under her hand.

All the time he stared into her eyes, searching for any response in those brown depths. She stared back with the fathomless unreadable regard of the desert.

‘Believe me now?’

Then he released her, letting his hand rest heavy on hers. She did not pull away. He felt her fingers beneath his on his prick, and he could have cried out for the torment and the pleasure of that touch.

And finally something broke in her gaze and he watched her face twist with emotion. She withdrew her hand and, standing, backed off across his chamber.

He watched her go in despair. He had unburdened himself of the words imprisoned within him, words he knew he should never have spoken. As the door smacked to he was left with an emptiness in his chest and the feeling that he had broken irrevocably something precious.

Cursing himself, he loosened his clothing and freed his cock, unable to resist its demands any more than he had been able to hold back the acid torrent of words. His balls were clenched with their burden. The hot skin under his grip felt like satin sliding over the wood-hard length beneath. Two firm strokes and his scrotum was knotting like a fist. Pain stabbed his shoulder. He closed his eyes, picturing the Malia Shai’s full lips, the soft ripe curve of them descending toward his swollen prick, the hint of moisture within, the little pink tip of her tongue preparing to lap at him – and with that the cauldron seething within him boiled over, the contents spouting and frothing like scalded cream over his fingers, his thigh, his twitching belly. He plunged headlong into the agony and the delight with a moan of despair.

*************************************

amazon.co.uk : amazon.com

xxx
Janine

janineashbless.com
MySpace + Blog

PS: Don't forget - today (Friday) is your last chance to use our fabulous LoveHoney money-off offer. You're never too old for toys! See the link on the right.

The Sensual Traveler: The Exotic Erotic

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

My husband and I just returned from a week-long cruise to Bermuda. The days at sea gave us the rare luxury of time when we had absolutely nothing we had to do and absolutely no set schedule. A queen-size bed, an ocean view, and no reason not to spend the day in the queen-sized bed, watching the hypnotic blue silk of the ocean and immersing ourselves in each other.

Then there was Bermuda itself: a riot of fragrant flowers, warm azure water, colorful old houses, hot sun, scented breezes, and pink sand. At night, you could smell frangipani and salt water, hibiscus and greenery, on the soft air, and tiny tree frogs made a racket with their constant mating calls. Horny little buggers, tree frogs, almost as bad as the younger tourists and the island boys doing their mating dance in the bars at night. Bermuda aroused all my senses in a very erotic way, and my clever husband wasted no time in taking advantage of this. Repeatedly, despite us both being weary from long days of snorkeling.

Since one can’t have sex or snorkel (or have sex while snorkeling, but we wouldn’t do such a thing now, would we?) all the time (pity, that) and since I am an erotica writer, I found myself wool-gathering about why travel is so sexy.

Hot vacation encounters are a staple in erotica, with whole collections devoted to the topic. (Wicked Words: Sex on Holiday and E is for Exotic, among others, feature Lust Biters’ takes on the topic.)

From a writer’s point of view, it’s easy to understand why we revisit this theme: instant conflict potential. From cultural and linguistic misunderstandings to the inevitability—or is it?—of parting, the vacation fling or romance provides built-in ways to make your characters miserable even while they’re having amazingly hot sex. And if your characters are already a couple, removing them from their ordinary lives can shake things up, revealing all sorts of unexpected emotions, desires, and inner turmoil. Besides, exotic settings give you an excuse to waste time trolling around travel web sites and dreaming about your own future vacations under the guise of research. (Oops, was that the outside voice?)

But it’s not only in literature that exotic locations bring on erotic encounters. Most of us who’ve traveled at all could confess to a night of passion (or at least a titillating, much fantasized-about flirtation) with a stranger in a strange land, or to enjoying a familiar lover in a new way under foreign skies.

But why? Let me count the ways…and then ask for your theories and stories.

If you’re on holiday, there’s no reason not to take a mid-day siesta with your sweetie, or to “sleep” in without getting a lick of extra sleep. For some of us old married types, simply having a little relaxed time with the spouse, far away from leaking faucets, hairball-yakking cats, ringing phones, deadlines, etc., will wake up a lazy libido. And for those of us who stoke our libidos constantly due to writing smut for a living…well, things are bound to get interesting when we’re pulled away from the computer and we can finally apply all that sexual energy to real life!

Then there’s the exotic setting—see Bermuda, above. Anything could happen in this new and seductive place. You’re already on a grand adventure, your senses already stirred. Makes that much easier to get turned on, isn’t it? Back in college I met a boy in the walled medieval city of Avignon, on the night of a festival that involved the wild white horses of the Camargue being run through the narrow streets and wine being flung about to drench unsuspecting passersby. In a more mundane setting, I might not have looked at him twice, but in such a wild atmosphere, sparks flew that had very little to do with him and me and a lot to do with the exotic excitement of the night. (The wine, which was flowing liberally into us as well as into the gutters, helped, but those white horses really did me in.)

Sometime just before dawn, when we were all fucked out and the wine was gone, we all bundled back into our clothes and wandered up onto the deck. The air had a nip to it, and the breeze was strong, but it smelled like ocean and, faintly, like herbs. Pale stars still hung in the sky, and at the eastern horizon, the sky was just starting to turn pink. We didn’t snuggle or anything, even though it was cool enough that it would have made sense to huddle together for warmth. We just stood there, holding the rail, letting the sea breeze wash the funk and smoke and stale alcohol off us, not talking, until the sun came up and Corsica came into focus through the fog.

I don’t know about you, but I find hotel rooms, with their clean, bland white sheets and their comfortable anonymity, a spur toward loud, messy, sheet-destroying fun. Even if it’s a random roadside motel halfway to someplace more interesting. Maybe it’s because hotel rooms are all about the bed. Maybe it’s something about “We don’t know these people, so who cares if we make embarrassing levels of noise?” or not having to wash the sheets. (Note: Courteous horny travelers should always leave large tips for housekeeping to make up for any strange stains we leave in our wake.)

The “I don’t know these people” attitude can be taken several steps farther, of course. Travel can take on the air of if it happens in a different country (or state or city), it doesn’t count. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and all that. No guilt, no recriminations, no complications, just play safe, have fun, and come home with spicy stories to share with your girlfriends over drinks.

I helped Claudel open his pants. He was hairy, also uncircumcised—just assume they all are unless I say otherwise, a lot of Frenchmen are—and smelled like Camembert. Stop with the faces, Fiona. I know it doesn’t sound all that appealing now, but think about it. You’re in the bowels of this ferry, rocking back and forth, hearing the Mediterranean slapping against it as you move through the night. You’re young, on your way to someplace you’ve never been, someplace that smacks of bandits and The Count of Monte Cristo. You’re about to fulfil one of your top ten masturbatory fantasies, and someone has just succeeded in ripping your tights and is nudging the head of his big cock against you, trying to push his way inside. At a time like that, the hairiness and aroma just seemed French, and thus exciting.

The erotic possibilities are endless—a vast stock of sultry, seductive strangers (complete with attractive accents) to pick from. Maybe you’ll even try something edgy enough you don’t want to share it with your girlfriends. That hot couple? The leather-clad dyke? That obviously inappropriate biker/older married man/priest/barely legal piece of boy- or girlflesh? Why not—who’ll ever know?

It had always been a fantasy, being at the centre of a gang-bang, men everywhere, one after another using me—or me using them, or us using each other, however you want to look at it—until I was aching all over from orgasms, my jaws hurt from sucking so many cocks, and I was limp as a come-slick rag doll. But it wasn’t like I was about to suggest that fantasy to anyone back in the States. I didn’t want to be known as the gang-bang bitch […]. This was my chance, with a bunch of hot guys I’d never see again. […] And everyone knows that what happens during junior year abroad—and especially what happens on a road trip during junior year abroad—doesn’t count anyway.

Of course, “no complications” doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes your sultry stranger turns out to be more fascinating than you expect, and you linger in Barcelona when you’d planned to move on Segovia, and you try to change your ticket home, but finally you have to leave and you find yourself running up huge phone bills, IM’ing to all hours of the night, and trying to figure out how to bring together two vastly different lives. Here we enter the territory of the erotic romance, with hot sex aplenty and hope for a happy ending. And that possibility may be the most seductive fantasy of all.

So…why do you think travel is sexy? Got any good stories to share?

Excerpts from “The Wildest Thing” by Teresa Noelle Roberts (in Wicked Words: Sex on the Move)

The Wonderful World of Winners

Kristina Lloyd
We've got results of THREE giveaways to announce! Heck, we're so nice.

1. Wet Men and Love Honey Lovin':

The big buzzy bunny (aka Jessica Rabbit Platinum Vibrator) goes to the first Lisa (sorry second Lisa!), commenting at 12.42 after an excruciating Friday.

The ten G-spot vibes set to turn on the UK go to:
Mad Fairy
Goodgirl
Bam Bam
Ann
Marshall Banana
Melissa Heywood
HL Berry
Tirlan
Eloise
Perky

2. Madeline Moore's Wild Card goes to Jeremy Edwards

3. Rachel Kramer Bussel's Naughty Spanking Stories 2 go to Just Craig

Congratulations winners! Please send names and postal addresses to lustbitesladies [at] yahoo [dot] com. And please tell me which prize you won or I may get confused and Jeremy could end up reading a rabbit.

Thanks to everyone who joined in and made wet men such fun. I'd give you all a platinum Jessica if I could. Don't forget out fabulous discount deal with Love Honey runs until Friday, so if you want to invest in some Wild Bitch handcuffs, a light-up glass dildo, a stash of condoms or a bundle of amazingly hot, sexy books (yes - ours!) then this is the week to do it. Check out the sidebar and place your order before the weekend using the LUSTBITES voucher. And have fun!

If you're still hungry for more hot men (are you lot never sated?), try the fabulous For Her blog where the hotties keep coming, or lose yourself in pictures at Provocateuse.

And of course, keep loving it the Lust Bites' way!

Kristina Lloyd x

PS Did that last bit sound like a naff advertising slogan or do you think I got away with it?

Dirty White Shoes: How Televangelism Turned Me into a Smut Writer

Anne Tourney


There are still some parts of this country, mostly in its biblically belted waist, where your mother will yank you out of town once you get your white shoes dirty. It doesn't matter what you tell her, if your rosy lips were made to spill the truth. That old rule about wearing white shoes before Labor Day doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. You don’t want to wear those Sunday school shoes, you never wanted to wear those shoes. Anyway, those white shoes will be filthy the moment they touch your slutty feet.

Back in the Reaganite 80’s, when I was a teenager, late August was the sweltering armpit of every Bible Belt summer. Outdoors, the air sizzled with the whir and whine of bugs; indoors, tired air conditioners leaked a cool, thin trickle through the density of heat. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the television, my thighs sticky with juice from the plate of watermelon I held in my lap, I spent way too many hours watching TV as I brooded over the encroaching First Day of School.

Yes, I watched soap operas in those days. And sitcoms. And family dramas. But my secret obsession was The Christian Broadcasting Network, a channel that filtered the news of the world, and the news of the soul, through a lens of Christianity, specifically the 20th-century, neo-conservative, Reaganized version of the faith. I spent hours with my eyes glued to CBN, not for the news broadcasts or the more mainstream talk shows, but for the electrified, revival tent contingent of preachers and singers, saviors and sinners. The soap stars had nothing on Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker of The PTL Club, and the dramas played out on Days of Our Lives or All My Children were yawn-worthy compared to the visions of impending apocalyptic doom (the year 2000 was right around the corner, and the Book of Revelation was getting a workout).

Then there were the dirty rumors that started cropping up in the secular media about Jim Bakker’s financial and sexual excesses, and Jimmy Swaggart’s soft spot for hookers. When the rumors proved to be true, the tearful public confessions that followed were equally lurid, and way more difficult to believe.

I haven’t thought about them in years, those smooth-talking, impeccably coiffed men of God, with their manicured hands and chunky rings, their pricey suits and their bulging real estate portfolios, their tenderly supportive wives and surgically enhanced secretaries. When Tammy Faye Bakker died last month, photos of her before and after cancer brought that world back into my consciousness. The emaciated, sallow woman of July 2007 was a specter of the buxom, unapologetically tacky televangelista who belted out Gospel songs while batting eyelashes that do a tarantula proud.

Though my family didn’t practice an evangelical version of Christianity, my childhood was steeped in a culture shaped by a Fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Even as a teen, I was never able to understand how the Son of God, supposedly the tangible manifestation of an incomprehensibly vast divine love, could be held up as a wrathful homophobic, or how the Gospel could be used as a stick to beat sinners with, by men who did some pretty hefty sinning, themselves. Salvation is at your fingertips, the televangelists declared, redemption is just a few crocodile tears away, and yes, eternal life can be yours—if you’re a clean-cut Christian with a clear complexion and a bright n’ shiny heterosexual lifestyle.

Over time I’ve tried to write my way through those violently mixed messages, not so much to reach an understanding of the spiritual life of the Religious Right, but to reach my own reconciliation of Christianity—the faith I still identify with—and my ever-overactive sexual imagination:

In your dirty white shoes, you stroll out to the edges of town, out past the shoulder of the highway, up toward the hills. It's one of those dream-walks. Your panties are soaked, and the heels of your shoes sink into the earth. Cars edge you onto the dark side of the road, alarming you with lights and horns, but you don't stop walking. You squat down to relieve yourself, and you know that your hot pee is going to yellow those heels the way it used to stain the snow behind your back porch (your brother could write his entire name in urine; it wasn't your fault that your physiology allowed only a dribble).

But it wasn’t just the sleaze, the sensationalism, or the outright lies that fascinated me. Quite the contrary—somewhere, in my timid adolescent soul, fed on a crunchy blend of secular skepticism and Episcopal doctrine—I was drawn to the idea of giving myself to Jesus, with some preacher as my intermediary, holding me underwater, shaping my transformation, helping me come to Christ. I longed for that climactic surrender, and the afterglow of acceptance that would follow.

I’d always known, from the time I was a child, that I was “bad.” Or “dirty.” I wasn’t sure why, but in the televangelists, I found confirmation that yes, human nature was intrinsically sexual, craven, lustful, and downright filthy. I’d always known that to be the case; I just wondered why bad had to be equated with wrong. I wasn’t quite sure what “sodomy” entailed, at the age of sixteen, but I had an uneasy feeling that I might have inadvertently done it, and that I should probably confess to it, just in case. Though I was drawn to the idea of being relieved of my sins through confession, conversion, and salvation, I always suspected that the relationship between sexuality and divinity was far too deep and vast to be reigned in by the moral fences of the Religious Right (did you ever notice that those white picket fences are reinforced by concertina wire?).

You don't feel Jesus glaring down on you when the boy's two fingers make you wriggle and scream, or when he scalds your thighs with his hot milk. But somehow, in your own backwards vision of the way salvation works, you feel Jesus arrive on the scene when your boyfriend hunkers down under the car seat, shoves your panties to one side with his thumb, and lovingly begins to chew your pussy. You hear the church choir singing "Nearer My God to Thee" when your thighs start to tremble, and your hips thrust up the pelvic offering plate of their own accord, and your clit peaks to steeple height.

What was it about those evangelical preachers that made me squirm with an uneasy mix of revulsion and teenage lust? I have to admit, I was seduced the easy tenderness of their emotions, their cloyingly mellow voices, their willingness to bare their hearts, whether it was in responding to the testimony of some wayward convert, or in confessing their own sins. With all the intimacy of the bedroom, they confessed and prayed and shared and felt in front of millions. They raised their hands to the sky, they closed their eyes in ecstasy, they moaned, they writhed. The ultimate in evangelical emotionalism occurred during the conversion experience, through the great spiritual release of “being saved." Coming to Jesus . . . really, can that choice of words be a coincidence?

According to the sweaty preacher in the tight polyester slacks, salvation was as simple as having Jesus Christ belly up to the local ice-cream bar and pay for your pineapple sundae before you even know you want it. But would Jesus still buy your sundae if he knew that your best friend gave you a crashing waterfall of an orgasm with the eraser of a Number Two pencil? You tend to suspect Jesus might have had more painful things on his mind than the orgasms of a girl who wouldn't be born for a couple of thousand more years, what with the Philistines berating him and his disciples denying him, and a crucifix bearing down on his shoulders.

I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal church, and in my observant phases, I spent my Sunday mornings in the cool, classically beautiful chapel of Trinity Episcopal. Episcopalian men didn’t cry, not because they weren’t emotionally liberated, but because any emotions experienced in a worship setting were usually too subtle, or were contained by a pressed, three-piece suit. (“Oh! Was that an epiphany I just experienced? Why yes, I do believe it was.”) With our sedate general public confession and our careful progression through the sacraments, we weren’t in any danger of experiencing orgasmic, ecstatic revelations of divine magnitude.

There was a certain sensual tenderness about the televangelists that attracted me, too. Trembling lips, silky waved hair, soft chins and hands . . . something intrinsically feminine about their personae. Yet at any time, they could call on the hard truth of Fundamentalism, the rigid dichotomies between right and wrong, good and evil. Counterbalancing that effeminate tenderness were the harsh, self-righteous wrath, the heat of the apocalypse, the dramatic eschatology of the Book of Revelation. Yet that fire and brimstone often seemed to fizzle down to a cold core of hypocrisy. The men who raged most vehemently against sin, who cried out the most passionately for repentance, seemed to be the most skillful at covering up their own crap.

Years later, when I first started writing erotica, I tried to put those Bible Belt memories behind me. It wasn’t so much that those threats of damnation made me feel guilty, but that they threatened my creative freedom. That televised Bible-thumping belonged to my past; I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, getting my feet (and other parts) wet with sex-positive feminism, and conservative Christian morality wasn’t part of that new identity.

It took a few years of writing, finding a voice, before I was able to plunge into the well of the past, and when I dove in, I brought up a big dipperful of the Gospel. Strangely enough, I didn’t want to write against Christianity. I wanted to rewrite those experiences, giving them new endings, in which spiritual redemption was a matter of self-discovery, not self-denial. In stories like “Sex in the Pre-Apocalypse,” “Dirty White Shoes,” “The Book of Zanah,” and “Come for Me, Dark Man,” I fumbled around trying to articulate the idea that our sexuality—in whatever form it takes, whatever voice it speaks—is the physical manifestation of our divinity, and because of that, sex is good.

The wonderful thing about being a woman, a slut, and a perpetual child with unclean shoes is the way these act repeat themselves; you can hear the echo of those repetitions across acres of time. An anonymous screw remains as filthy and as joyous as ever; the fornicators of the world still constitute a rebel nation. You can wear your white shoes, in utter defiance of fashion, all the way to February, and some lady in the grocery store will still reprimand you for it. You can live like a whore, baring your tits and pussy to a tired world, and bask in the ancient light of damnation.

I wouldn’t say that the explosion of televangelism in the 1980’s turned me into a smut writer, though the prospect of burning naked over an eternal barbecue pit ignited a few fantasies. The sideshow tableaux of Hell and damnation didn’t offer me enough meat to feed any serious rebellion. What those TV preachers gave me, with their honey-coated condemnation of anyone who didn’t fuck members of the opposite sex in the missionary position within the bonds of holy matrimony, was motivation to cling to the fragments of Gospel as I understood it, and to live out that word according to my own twisted interpretation.

And I have to give thanks to Tammy Faye, a woman of God who was never ashamed to live out her vision of cosmetically challenged glamour, for inspiring me to take my fantasies public. Even in my shy, self-conscious adolescence, I felt a kinship with the outrageously overpainted Tammy; she clearly oozed something, but it wasn’t that cloying hypocrisy that seemed to taint so many of her cohorts. It was more like . . . sexuality. Raw, flamboyant, sluttish sexuality. And compassion. And strength. She was strong enough to survive the public scourging that followed the collapse of the Heritage USA empire, strong enough to survive marital infidelity and divorce, even strong enough to survive a makeover, and bounce back with her eyelashes thicker than ever. Though her soul had been saved by Jesus, she retained the design sense of a ho and the generous heart of a sinner:

You can be part of that breed of gloriously misguided sinners who never could match their shoes to the seasons, one of those women who could never touch their lips to a teacup or a cock without leaving a ring of sticky scarlet lipstick. You can be one of us, if you're willing to be yanked out of your comfortable town. Remember, honey--it ain't the shit on your toes that matters, it's the height of your heels.

Thanks, Tammy Faye. I’ll miss you.

* * * *

Fiction excerpts from “Dirty White Shoes,” by Anne Tourney