Nerve Insider : archives

From the Archives: Extreme Lengths

Nicole Ankowski — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:58:00 GMT

Originally published on the site in 2004, Austin Bunn's harrowing personal essay “Extreme Lengths” is an excruciating read involving the long-clichéd male rite of passage, circumcision. Uncut schlongs have been fetishized in gay culture, most notably in Bel Ami's eurotwink releases. However, for a pubescent Bunn, his overhanging prepuce was a source of muliebrity and teenage dread. Even if you have never struggled personally with lobbing your foreskin off with dental floss, Bunn's deliciously awkward coming-of-age tale will ring true in painfully rich detail. — Joey Hood

From the Archives: In Praise of the Missionary Position

Nicole Ankowski — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:26:00 GMT

While vanilla sex has been bulwarked by pruned-faced housefraus—or slaves to the patriarchy, as the Freidans call it—contributing writer Rebecca Archer's personal narrative, “In Praise of the Missionary Position,” offers a stunning vis-à-vis in defense of “natural sex.” First published on the site in 2002, Archer's kink-free account offers a fresh twist on an old parlor room favorite. She made no bones about bottoming: “I am a lazy fuck,” she wrote. But with her salty anecdotes involving a Hitachi vibrator, “In Praise of the Missionary Position” becomes a movement for the submissive everywoman...just not Phyllis Schlafly. — Joey Hood

From the Archives: Thirteen One-Night Stands

Nicole Ankowski — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:15:00 GMT

The Greek waiter at The Steakhouse, the janitor, the Okie, the high school sweetheart, “Burning Man, 1997”…Lisa Gabriele takes list-making, and reminiscing, to new heights. Funny, awkward (her younger brother?!), honest and sexy…check out her “Thirteen One-Night Stands,” with a handy “key to symbols” on the right…

Can you guess which number this one is?

I met him at a cheesy bar in Acapulco when I was seventeen. He looked a lot like my boyfriend back home. I kept saying that over and over again, until he said, “Yeah, but I bet your boyfriend don't got an extra one of these.”

Read all lucky thirteen here.

From the Archives: I Was a Teenage Prostitute

Nicole Ankowski — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:15:00 GMT

Excerpted from Lisa Carver’s memoir, Drugs Are Nice, this tale of teenage prostitution that went up on the site back in 2005 deviates from the usual hard-luck or sexual-empowerment tales by occupying a space in between, where selling your body is both a means of connection and an unavoidable path to losing yourself. Carver wandered into prostitution as a means to take advantage of her 19-year-old beauty. In her new role, she found a part of herself that was incredibly adept at perceiving and playing to the fantasies of others. She eventually struggled with leaving this job that she essentially enjoyed in order to salvage the final bits of her true self.

— Steph Auteri

From the Archives: Pregnant with Anticipation

Nicole Ankowski — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:36:00 GMT

Do you cringe when you think of pregnant sex? Or are hot mamas like Halle Berry and Jessica Alba making you wish you could put more than just a bun in their ovens? A trip into the Nerve Archives yields some surprisingly steamy results…check out “F*cking His Wife, Four Months Pregnant with Their Third Child,” fiction by Paula Bomer from the 2001 Married Sex Issue:

Her skin seems powdered with stardust, it's moist dammit, and sparkling at him he swears, and her eyes are wet like a healthy cat's, glowing at him in the dark, open now, looking at him while their tongues stroke the insides of their mouths like they've never tasted each other before.

You’ll definitely want to read the entire piece. And in “Nine and a Half Months,” Bernadette Noll relates the sexual surge and wild urges she encountered while pregnant. These ladies will make you see Juno in a whole new light.

From the Archives: The Halcyon Years of Adult Film

Sarah — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Porn these days is mostly an internet phenomenon – few triple-X features are made on film and even fewer advertise themselves through traditional movie posters. No so old films; the book X-Rated: Adult Movie Posters of the 60s and 70s celebrated classic XXX placards, and in 2004 we reproduced a few of the best. See them here.

From the Archives: A Personal Essay by Emily DePrang

Sarah — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

In 2005 Ms. Emily DePrang wrote a great essay about being fired for sexual harassment for our Sex at Work issue.

“For the next week, a little voice piped up every few seconds to remind me — you're a pervert. People who knew you were grossed out by you. People you shared cigarettes with were disturbed enough to trot downstairs and report you. However absurd their definition of sexual harassment, I had met it.”

Emily is not the first person who comes to mind when you think of sexual harassment. But she make it through ok, and her professional career didn’t suffer for it.

Read her essay here.

From the Archives: A Personal Essay by David Shields

Sarah — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

"The Rachel Mysteries: A Trilogy" is a personal essay from 1999 by David Shields about his first love. He reads her journal and they have intense, enraptured sex.

“In her journal, she wrote that she had never been kissed like this in her life and that she inevitably had trouble going to sleep after seeing me. She actually said she was afraid she'd go blind when I entered her. Where did she learn these lines, anyway?”

Do you snoop? Are you glad you did?

Read the essay here.

From the Archives: An Essay by Enrique Fernández

Sarah — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Merry day after Christmas! We’re posting a story that explains why some men cat-call women on the street. It's also about desiring people of the cloth and more generally about the sexuality of a lapsed Roman Catholic. But what sticks out in our mind is this explanation of cat-calls, or piropos:

“Theoretically, the ultimate point of the piropo is seduction, but no one actually believes that will come to pass; all enunciators of piropos are sexual agnostics. The real point of the piropo is to make the woman smile, even if only inwardly.”

What a great explanation! We should note that “what differentiates [a piropo] from harassment is, in a word, wit. Say something inappropriate, flat, dull, clumsy, silly or — the horror! — gross, and you're a jerk, a loser, a schlemiel.” How nice, as a woman, to think of witty comments as something apart from harassment.

To read more about piropos and the erect nipples of a female Episcopalian priest, click here.

From the Archives: Fiction by Deb Margolin

Sarah — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

This story takes place in the end of the summer, “when even the heat feels cool because it’s tired of itself.” It’s set in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a town that “had the stillness of a rattlesnake before the strike.”

The descriptions in this story are spot-on. The narrator hears a fight start “slowly, like a lawn-mower far away.” Sadness is “the tainted maudlin kind you feel in a playground empty of children.” Desire is “a terrifying, beautiful muscle that moved like a fish.”

Read "Alfie and Joe" here.

From the Archives: More Gifts!

Sarah — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

We did a gift guide last year, and those ideas are still good this year! Some of them are no longer the cool in thing (Nintendo Wii), some of them will always be awesome (wireless iPod soundsystem), and some of them are even better (The Emperor’s Children is now in paperback!). Check it out here.

From the Archives: Gangbang Fantasies

Sarah — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

This essay is about gangbang fantasies. Jack Murnighan worked at Nerve back in the day and in May of 1999 and gangbangs insinuated themselves into his brain. In his own words, “this confluence of events has left me thinking a lot about gangbangs, getting aroused, and finding that I am decidedly uncomfortable about the reasons behind my arousal.”

Who among us has not had a fantasy that, when examined post-climax (or pre, in the author's case), feels off, like we debased ourselves by allowing this thought to take control of our body and mind and, moreover, enjoying it? Surprisingly, the essay didn’t get any feedback. No one was outraged, no one admitted indulging in their own gangbang thoughts.

Read it here and see what you think.

From the Archives: "Separation Anxiety," fiction by Tom Lombardi

Sarah — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

After “Cock in a Box” today’s archive piece couldn’t be anything else but this “Separation Anxiety” by Tom Lombardi. The story has a similar premise: an ex delivers an intimate body part to their former lover. Mary Kann’s piece is entirely plausible; Tom Lombardi’s is surreal.

“I got out of bed and hurried into the kitchen to greet her, only to spot her vagina lying there on the linoleum, its labia glistening atop the white napkin on which she'd placed it."

See what I mean? Read the full story here.

From the Archives: Hangovers

Sarah — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

So. Yesterday was our annual holiday lunch. We had a champagne toast at 1:45 pm because Material Media had a great year, and then we had more champagne, and wine, and after-lunch drinks. And then we came back to the office and worked! Although some of us left early. And this one continued to consume at dinner, and after dinner at a show.

In light of all this, today’s archived pieces explore the wonders of the hangover. (Although to be honest, this writer isn’t hung-over, per se, just a little dried out.)

On January 1, 2001, Jack Murnighan excerpted a bit of Bukowski, proclaiming “his life was sordid, but in the most redeeming and beautiful sense of the word.” Bukowski himself writes:

“I'm just sitting in a room on N. Kingsley Dr., out of the hospital with hemorrhages, stomach and ass, my blood all over the county general hospital, and they telling me after nine pints of blood and nine pints of glucose, "one more drink and you're dead."

And in 1999 Louise Redd brought us a story called “Hangover Soup.”

“I read that night's letter over and over, and I told myself that even though Jay loved me more than some women are ever loved, he still loved alcohol more. If alcohol were a woman, Jay wouldn't be able to keep his hands off her.”

From the Archives: Pregnant Sex

Sarah — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:00:00 GMT

Today’s archive piece is a bit late in the day. To make up for it we bring you a personal essay, from way back in 1999, by Bernadette Noll about her luscious, sexual, pregnant self. Take anything you’ve heard about sex during pregnancy and throw it out. Check out the excerpt below and you’ll see what I mean.

“Agony? Not for me. Ecstasy? Oh yes. Each caress, each squeeze, each unintentional brush ran down to my clitoris and back up again, flooding the portion of my brain reserved for rapture.”

Read the full essay here.

From the Archives: An interview with a strip club bouncer

Sarah — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:59:00 GMT

In 2003 Grant Stoddard interviewed a bouncer at a New Jersey strip club. Just how far can you push the “no-touching” rule? Not far at all.

“I have a little saying at work: ‘Crack kills.’ If the girl turns around and a guy sticks his finger somewhere, he's a dead man.”

From the Archives: God Gave Adam a Huge Cock

Sarah — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the huge penis-boy Miss Information lent her time to today I searched the archives for other instances of huge cocks and lo, I found this poem by Joe Wenderoth. “In the Garden,” is a re-imagining of the creation story in which Adam has a huge cock and God gives him a blow-job. It is outrageous, hilarious and perhaps not for those who are offended by light-hearted sexualization of sacred religious texts. Here is an excerpt:

“And so in the garden there was silky-good pussy and a huge cock, and this pleased God, and this pleased the boy, and God's eyeballs rose up through the boy's cock and spilled out into the pussy, for which the boy was always at first grateful.”

Read the whole poem here. Really, it’s worth a read.

From the Archives: Photography by Ralph Gibson

Sarah — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

“Shoot First” is a Ralph Gibson gallery from 1999. One of the photo set’s eleven photos is above. Below is an excerpt from Meredith Kovach’s interview with Gibson.

“I use my work to examine the enigmas in my life. And although I never get answers to the questions that I ask, I always get better definitions, more acceptable definitions. And so my photographs represent inquiries, protracted views, examinations of a set of given ideas, whatever might be intriguing me at that point in my life.”

They also talk about the history of the New York photography world, Gibson’s experiences at Max’s Kansas City and what it’s like to see ones’ influence in younger artists.

From the Archives: "Sexual Outlet" by Kim Sevcik

Sarah — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

In “Sexual Outlet,” Kim Sevcik works in Larry Flynt’s Hustler Hollywood sex shop for a day. She discovers that her private kinks aren’t so uncommon, and that parents and porn stores aren’t mutually exclusive.

“As the store's toy buyer, Doug is an inveterate sexual trend-spotter. ‘Anal sex is very in,’ he confided to me in an insider tone. ‘Everyone's doing it. You see a woman wheeling three kids around in her grocery cart, and you can bet that later, she's in here buying anal lube.’”

From the Archives: “Third Party,” fiction by Jay McInerney

Sarah — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

This story is about a guy who’s just broken up with his girlfriend. He goes to Paris to forget about her and to recast himself as the romantic figure he wants to be. He’s someone who takes his identity from the way he imagines other people see him. You never do know what other people think of you, though, and some of the worst misunderstandings come when you try to project one thing but people are perceive something different.

“They drank the bottle of champagne and ordered another. Alex was happy for the company. Moreover, he couldn't help liking himself as whoever they imagined him to be. The idea that they had mistaken him for someone else was tremendously liberating.”

From the Archives: "My Issues With Becoming a Greenberg," a personal essay by Mara Levy

Sarah — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed that our homepage has some messages about scotch on it. The Insider was thus inspired to search out stories that involve drinking the fabled “brown water,” so dubbed by Mara Levy in her essay, “My Issues Withy Becoming a Greenberg,” in which she discusses marrying a Jew. She’s Jewish, too, so this shouldn’t be a problem, but, as happens with so many problems that shouldn’t matter, it is.

“Is the name Greenberg any more Jewish than Levy? The tiny logical part of my brain does, in fact, know the answer to this question: of course not. So why, then, am I so uncomfortable trying on my new last name? Honest answer: I can't shake the feeling that I'm outing myself to myself, even though, as my best friend, Meta, likes to point out, everyone already knows I'm a Jew.”

For the curious minds out there, the essay has nothing to do with drinking scotch, except that Mara meets her husband when they both order Dewars (really) at a bar in Tel Aviv.

From the Archives: "for my swiffer wetjet," poetry by T. Cole Rachel

Sarah — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

The swiffer gets sexy.

“what is not to love
about something with such purpose, slim
and hard, the heft of it, the glide
of its downy underside”

From the Archives: A Sex Show that Feels like a Suburban Mall

Sarah — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

The holiday shopping season is upon us. Today is ‘Cyber Monday,’ the online equivalent of ‘Black Friday,’ when online shoppers ignore work and spend money online. But! Many of us will still spend hours at the mall this year, searching for the right gift for sisters and nieces and aunts and uncles. With that in mind today’s archive piece is “Shopping and Fucking,” a dispatch from “The Everything To Do With Sex Show,” which took place in Toronto in 2000. Don’t be fooled, though, even if it feels like a mall, a sex show is probably not the place to shop for your family.

“Everything is mall-bright, mall-cheerful, and there is always music in the air. It's terrifically welcoming and utterly neutral all at the same time…The Everything To Do With Sex Show is a tribute to the redemptive power of shopping, and it has made of the Automotive Building a temporary version of the mall, that cathedral of consumption.”

Read the whole piece here.

From the Archives: “The Granddaddy of All Lies,” fiction by Max Ludington

Sarah — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:30:00 GMT

This story is about a guy who ties up his girlfriend and then goes out, leaving her bound.

“I don't know what made me think to do that. I'd never done it before. But I slipped as quietly as I could out of the room and down the stairs. I have to say, truthfully, it was pretty fucking exciting…The whole walk to the store all I could think about was Kim's beautiful ass sticking up in the air back in the bedroom.”

The beginning of the story is pretty hot: a girl waiting, ass-up, tied up to a bed. But it becomes more and more uncomfortable the longer the boyfriend stays away. The piece got strong reactions from feedbackers:

“Whoa. I really liked it. I actually had sympathy for that poor dumb bastard.”

“Wow, I have really never hated a main character like that before. A good reminder that people like that actually exist, and that I should avoid them at all costs.”

Read “The Granddaddy of All Lies” here.

From the Archives: More Jardine Libaire

Sarah — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

“Angels, Ghosts and Strangers,” a personal essay by Jardine Libaire, was originally in our Erogenous Zones issue. It’s an homage to New York and the loves Libaire has had there.

"I once had a short affair with a wannabe thug. We tussled in my bedroom, his chest bare, his jeans black, his beeper on the floor, my nightie pulled up, his mouth between my legs — and the spire of Trinity Church stood in my window, the electric lights of the Financial District casting the spike's spiny shadow on us."

From the Archives: Poetry

Sarah — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Today, a poem from 2001.
"You ask me how I want to do it.
On a chair, I say, face to face."

From the Archives: Hair Removal

Sarah — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Nerve has published quite a few pieces that involve taking off the hair down there. Here are a few of my favorites:

A shaving fantasy come alive: “Without its kinky curls, the clitoris poked its head up from the newly manicured lawn like a baby field mouse. I watched the blades bite through strands, half-shocked that I didn't feel a thing.”

Margot Berwin describes her erotic encounter with a waxer. She slid the cream silk thong down around my ankles and over my feet. She looked in between my legs. "Oh, I missed a spot. I think you need a little more waxing."
I knew she could see how wet I was, but my legs just kept spreading wider apart.
"Do you want me to work in here?" she said, sliding a red nail into my pussy.

A bikini waxer tells all: “Do people take pain relievers before their sessions?
I always say, before a Sphynx, you should drink at least two glasses of vodka. That helps with the psychological pain, if not the physical pain.”

From the Archives: "Trooper," fiction by Alicia Erian

Sarah — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

In this story from our Summer Camp Issue a kid’s uncircumcised penis is nailed to a tree by his bunkmates. Later the victim makes friends with a boyish looking girl.

From the Archives: Fiction by Sam Lipsyte

Sarah — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

From 1998, Fifty-Five Fucks by Sam Lipsyte.

Four is Kenneth by the lake. Five is Kenneth and his brother Keith by the lake, their cocks like great, quivering cocks by the lake. Six is Moira with the tragic scar from tennis. Seven is me coming in Heidi, or Helene, in the front seat of my Dodge Dart, and me, or maybe not me, thinking nips, or thinking nips, knots, nips. Seven is me or rather not me coming in Heidi, or Helene, but also me throwing my hand over the vinyl seat to clutch the hand of Donna who is topping Brian, who is maybe bodkinned there by Brian, who is coming in Donna in the backseat of my Dodge Dart.

From the Archives: Ghosts of Halloweens Past

Sarah — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Glenn Glasser’s Halloween party pictures.

Test your Halloween costume I.Q.

The Masquerade, a gallery of masked models.

Bonus! The Scary Sex Issue.