Three sexy flash fictions from New Erotica For Feminists
Welcome to Recommended Reading’s Monday Commuter, our home for poetry, flash, graphic, and experimental narrative.
Issue №38
His hand trailed across her breast, tracing a shape with his finger.
“I’m so glad that they didn’t make you wear a scarlet letter after all,” Arthur said. “I mean, you thought your husband was lost at sea. It was an honest mistake.”
“It definitely was,” Hester said, running her fingers through his surprisingly silky hair.
“I’ve also been thinking — your embroidery is so exquisite and the people here don’t appreciate it. Want to move to New York and open a shop? I was thinking it might be nice to hire shunned ‘fallen’ women so they have livelihoods.”
“YES,” Hester cried, falling into his arms and starting the arduous process of removing nine petticoats. Then they had really hot sex, by Puritan standards. So, just missionary with light kissing.
“What are your fantasies, Pierre?”
He took a deep breath, nervous to share his dreams with her. She smiled encouragingly. I can trust her, he thought to himself.
“It would be a beautiful thing, a thing I dare not hope, if we could spend our life near each other, hypnotized by our dreams: your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream, and our scientific dream.”*
“Well, darling, I meant more like ‘Are you into dirty talk?’ but that sounds amazing too,” Marie Curie said breathlessly. “Let’s do it.”
And they did! Marie and Pierre went on to win a Nobel Prize in Physics together in 1903. Then Marie won a second Nobel Prize, for chemistry, in 1911 — no man required.
Oh, and their daughter ALSO went on to win the Nobel Prize, because we all turn into our mothers eventually.
*Actual quote from Pierre Curie, as he was trying to persuade Marie to marry him.
The firefighters arrive almost immediately and begin battling the blaze ignited when one of my dogs knocked over my pizza- scented candle.
Once safely on the front lawn, I cry out over the roar of the flames, “My dogs! My beloved dogs, Tina Spay and Amy Pawler, are still inside!”
“It’s too dangerous — don’t risk it!” yells my white male neighbor named Chad or Kyle who has probably never had to overcome adversity of any sort.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather die than let cute dogs named after my favorite comedians slash authors slash Golden Globe hosts perish,” replies a shredded fire-fighter who looks like a genetic mash-up of Idris Elba and danger.
He rushes into the inferno. Agonizing seconds tick past — we’re sure he’s lost to the blaze. Until — oh, yes! In the heat, his sculpted outline reappears with Tina Spay and Amy Pawler safely draped over his shoulders, snuffling him in doggie kisses of gratitude. His shirt has been artfully burned away by the flames to reveal a rippling, burnished torso, but — what’s that tucked in his oh-so-very-slim fireman suspenders? He retrieves it and hands it to me.
“I couldn’t help but notice you have some really rare first editions. You can replace your house, but you can’t replace a signed 1970 copy of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”
About the Authors
Caitlin Kunkel, Brooke Preston, Fiona Taylor, and Carrie Wittmer are comedy writers and satirists whose work has been featured in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and many other outlets. Together, they cofounded and edit the website The Belladonna, which responds to today’s culture, news, and politics with comedy and satire written by women and other marginalized genders.
About the Recommended Reading and the Commuter
The Recommended Reading Commuter publishes here every Monday, and is our home for flash and graphic narrative, and poetry. Recommended Reading is the weekly fiction magazine of Electric Literature, publishing every Wednesday morning. In addition to featuring our own recommendations of original, previously unpublished fiction, we invite established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommend great work from their pages, past and present. For access to year-round submissions, join our membership program on Drip, and follow Recommended Reading on Medium to get every issue straight to your feed. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.
From NEW EROTICA FOR FEMINISTS by Caitlin Kunkel, Brooke Preston, Fiona Taylor and Carrie Wittmer to be published on November 13th by Plume, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. copyright © 2018 by Caitlin Kunkel, Brooke Preston, Fiona Taylor and Carrie Wittmer
Inflame Your Loins With The Desire for Equality was originally published in Electric Literature on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
