With Friends with a Rough Tongue

Why go to a school reunion when I can go to a book launch instead?

Such was it when I attended the With Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn book launch last night.
I met up with the usual suspects. Chatted with poetess Zoe Whittel about day jobs. Ogled the WRT editors Trish Kelly and Amber Dawn with Trade! magazine editor Jon Pressick. [image from Arsenal Pulp Press]

Stuck my foot in my mouth when I asked butch writer Regan McClure if she had contributed to the *femme* anthology. Nonetheless Regan did raise a good point: perhaps it is time for a butch porn anthology.

The bar was full of spectators but as I mentioned to my contemporaries it was clear that we were getting older. Instead of feminism and politics we were talking of household building, children and day jobs. By 8 pm I was ready to leave, unlike the young butches and femmes who were ready to party.

I suggested to Regan that perhaps it was time to organize pervy teatimes. She concurred. "The Women's bathhouse should really run from 2 to 8pm."

So in the end I only stayed for the first reading by May Lui, former Events Co-ordinator for Toronto Women's Bookstore, and my high school chum. This was the first piece she had ever had published in a book and clearly by the looks of the femme sucking on lollypops she made a mark.