I have followed Erica’s writing online for a couple of years now. Since I first found her blog and was lit up by something she’d put out into the world, we’ve written email after email, usually late at night and always rambly (in my case, at least). She has encouraged and inspired me in ways that would be sort of awkward to get into in an interview intro (although this is kind of that). Anyhow, for her interview we decided that we’d take our exchange to paper, via snail mail, because why not?

I got her letter (interview responses!) after a very long day and read them on the couch, a little drunk and very grateful. Here they are.

ERICA:

For years I blogged mostly about travel. I sat at these refurbished, dusty Dells in developing cities and wrote in a physical and mental vacuum about what I was experiencing and thinking and it was all just very one-sided. I hung it out on a little shingle and my friends and family offered biased praise from the motherland in ten words or less. It offered such a false security—left so much latent potential.

The thing I have come to love about Tumblr is that it’s not just writing in community. It’s reading and thinking and inspiring discipline and teaching in community. Some of the best things I’ve read anywhere have been on Tumblr by people I can email later that night. And correspondingly, I think some of the better things I’ve written this year were fleshed out and finished and offered up publicly because I know that would mean something to a community of not just friends but writers. I knew I would receive thoughtful feedback (when the writing warranted it) and might even prime the pump for someone else—returning the favor they’d done me with their piece I couldn’t stop reading the month before. And if my writing is flat—contrived or lazy or some flimsy imitation—well, I’ll know that through them too.

Writing in this community is life-giving and adds a fuel and urgency I haven’t felt in more static, one-dimensional platforms.

The book itself is a community of a different sort. Sometimes I envision it as a lit up apartment building, and I am standing across the street at night. I live across the hall from these people, quite literally, our stories are housed together but I don’t know most of these people yet. There’s a bundle of kinetic excitement I drag into each new story I read. A bundle of anticipation of new stories I’ll hear from writers I already love and all the moments I’ll meet from people I am related to but not in relation with.

ERICA:

When I reread this intimate little story, it’s not necessarily the transparency that gives me pause. It’s the fact that this is vulnerability and honesty as a snapshot, a still unfolding situation paralyzed in time and offered up for judgment. That’s daunting.

Oh, and yes, I do consider what people will think when they read it. The subjects of the story and the man that follows. But I don’t regret opening the blinds and showing a story—a process—that means as much to me now as it did then. There is something heavy in sharing it now as both a memory and one still tender. I think about friends and more accomplished writers scanning the paragraphs and the people I email at night, with the graphic portions open next to their laptop. And I wonder how some of them will see me differently—of course I do. But that is not a bad thing. It’s a thought without value judgment right now.

More so, I feel a little thrill…like the beginning of a relationship and those first emails you send in which you begin to make admissions and tell secrets and you are waiting with antsy fingers and a rumbling heart for him to respond. This is my life, this is my experience pulled out and pressed down like clover for you to consider; these are my basest feelings on love and sex and loss and climbing back under it all, all over again. And maybe this is a contribution to erasing the yoke of dignified conversation and what we are not allowed to talk about. Now, for better or worse, you have more of me, unrefined. Through the book, I will have more of a few of you. And maybe in the months ahead, through your own writing outlet, I’ll have more of all of you. This too remains thrilling.

Tess is a team player.

matthewgallaway:

So today my second copy of ‘Coming and Crying’ arrived, because I bought one and also received a contributor copy (I have a story in it, obv), and I wanted to take a few seconds to say that I’m very proud to be a part of it (which is why I added it to the stack of other books I’ve been a part of this year, which in some ways make life worth living, particularly if you’re over the age of ___ and you have to trudge to an office every day and even if you generally like your job — which I do, for the record! — you must slog through the same conversations about ___ and ___ and revenue and capitalism — but never in theoretical terms, because there’s no logic to it — that are the foundations of the modern workplace, sadly). Meaghan and Melissa did a great job putting this book together, and as someone who’s put out albums (as in vinyl, baby!) and CDs (fuck you, CDs) and zines and all sorts of other shit just for the sake of doing it, you should know that it’s a lot of work that nobody really ever gets paid for (or almost never), which makes it both better and worse (than paying jobs). Which is all to say that I hope you check it out; go buy a copy at McNally Jackson or other fine booksellers that are stocking it. There are a lot of interesting stories in the compilation from many different perspectives including __ and __ and even __, which is a relief in these times of increasing compartmentalization of sexual identities and (as I see it) the de-gaying of so much mnstrm entertainment (see, e.g., the latest season of Mad Men?), which is a tribute to Meaghan and Melissa and of course the other writers. My only quibble (which I mention because this is a self-criticism) is that while reading, it seemed to me like every guy described in the book has a giant cock (I’m not referring to myself, btw, in case that wasn’t obvious), and as we all know, not every guy has a giant cock, or should be expected to. As Betty White (of the amazing folk-rock duo Elton and Betty White) once sang so perfectly, ‘The Little Dicks Fit Me Best.’ So yeah, check out C&C and then go get busy, as people have been doing since the dawn of time. 

ohmeohyou:

COMING AND CRYING: AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER RAFFEL

I am in the lovely new book Coming and Crying, which is out now (I think), and I did an interview for it above.  I’m the youngest member in the book, and the cutest.  Check it out! And check out the book!

sexartandpolitics:

Hello world.

(via thewordunheard)

Here is how the first conversation went.

Me: Hey you guys.

Mom: Hey.

Dad: Hey.

Me: I got asked to be in an anthology!

Them: What! That’s great news!

Me: Yes! It’s an anthology about the human experience!

Mom: Wow…that’s so exciting.

Dad: Really? What about the human experience?

Me: Some of the parts of the human experience that you and I don’t often chat about!

Them: [dead silence]

Me: It’s a non-fiction sex anthology! Now don’t say anything yet.

Dad: That sounds cool!

Me: Wait, excuse me.

Mom: Can we have a copy? What are you going to write about? Oh, this is just great!

Me: Now I know you probably have concerns…

Dad: Wow, a book!

Me: Dad. It’s a sex book. Mom. Hello. Non-fiction sexy-time book writing. Now before you protest, let me —

Mom: Oh, stop that. Who cares.

Dad: Don’t be a prude. You’re not writing for your parents. Chill out.

Me: Well, it’s called Coming & Crying.

Mom: That’s funny!

Dad: L-O-L!

Me: Okay, this went better than I thought. I’m going to go tell Peter.

Mom: Yeah, sure!

Dad: [to my mom] It’s like she thought we’d be uncomfortable. I mean, we read her blog. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

Mom: Ha ha ha.

[they laugh at me as I hang up, confused]

This is how the second conversation went:

Me: I have some good news, and I have some complicated news!

Peter: Ooh, good news!

Me: I’m writing for an anthology!

Peter: That’s great! What about?

Me: Oh, just some non-fiction, nothing fictional at all. Just about, you know…well, it’s called Coming & Crying.

Peter: You’re not going to write about me, are you?

Me: No, I felt like that would be a little too weird.

Peter: You’re not writing about someone else, are you?

Me: Strictly speaking no, not anybody in particular.

Peter: What’s the complicated news?

Me: That was the complicated news.

Peter: Oh. Can I get a copy?

Me: Why aren’t you squirming uncomfortably?

Peter: Why should I squirm?

Me: I just want to make sure that you understand that the “coming” refers to —

Peter: Tess.

Me: Okay. So you know that when they say “coming” — I’m just saying this so I make sure you understand that what I’ll be writing about is —

Peter: Tess. Why are you being such a prude?

Me: So it’s perfectly fine for me to write about this.

Peter: You can write whatever you want!

Me: [really?] Oh, right, yeah, of course I can.

This is how the third conversation went:

Me: Hi Pam.

Pam: Hi.

Me: Good to see you here for a dinner of salad.

Pam: Let’s have some wine!

Me: You might want a lot of wine.

Pam: Why?

Me: Because…(bracing myself, talking fast) so like okay so I’m writing for this book and I didn’t ask your permission first so I changed your name, don’t worry about me having changed your name, which I did, but — let’s order wine.

Pam: You can’t start something like that and then make me wait for wine.

Me: Or can I? [we wait in silence for the wine. I wait as Pam drinks, pausing after each sip to let me talk except I won’t until the glass is empty and another has been poured] Okay?

Pam: That was a lot of wine.

Me: You’re in a story in a sex anthology and there’s nothing you can do about it because I sent it already.

Pam: Oh, sweet!

Me: Pam, don’t freak. Look. We were really young and nobody will know it was you. Except Lucy, if she reads it, she’ll know it’s you.

Pam: I don’t talk to Lucy anymore, she weirds me out.

Me: Great, then only you and I will know. And I have like a hundred friends named Pam so there’s some ambiguity. But let me buy you dinner. I feel horrible. I should have asked you first.

Pam: Oh, shut up, who cares. Can I get a copy of the book?

Me: Here’s what I did: I tried to keep you in mind as a reader. I tried to set boundaries. But I kind of ended up saying “fuck the boundaries.” I’m infinitely sorry. Maybe I can buy you a cashmere throw or something. God, I’m sorry.

Pam: What’s the matter with you? What’s the book called?

Me: Coming & Crying. 

Pam: Ha! That’s a great name!

Me: Forgive me Pam!

Pam: You’re coming off as strangely prudish. I don’t get you.

Me: I’m only prudish in retrospect.

I’m really excited for this book. It’s the first time I’ve been in a book. It’s the first time I’ve written non-fiction about sex. I’m glad my first was with two ladies I really trust.

(via tesslynch)

tylercoates:

I’m looking over the edits and comments from Meaghan and Melissa on my Coming & Crying story, and this a great way to start the week:

ha, I love a good Zima motif.

I’m glad that is such a UNIVERSAL SENTIMENT.