Editor's note: This article features adult content. My quotation does not endorse this kind of fiction. The comment addresses the reason this fiction appears popular now.

The Philadelphia Inquirier

Daily Magazine

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/83994622.html

Posted on Wed, Feb. 10, 2010

The sensual literary salon

Pleasures in public: Listening to erotica

By Lini S. Kadaba

Inquirer Staff Writer

The Erotic Literary Salon pounds with words, thosewords, the ones not usually uttered in polite company - or in private without a blush.

But few at the Bohemian Absinthe Lounge at Time, a restaurant-bar at 13th and Sansom Streets, look particularly shocked.

Not Lou Ludovici, 70, of Fox Chase, a commercial radio engineer in the middle of a divorce. Nor Rachel Fogletto, 24, a social work student at the University of Pennsylvania who's interested in "anything on the taboo side."

And certainly not clinical sexologist Susana Mayer, 61, a Ph.D. in human sexuality who lives in Center City and launched the eroticafest in 2008 - third Tuesday evening of the month, all welcome, she says, as if promoting Scrabble night - with one goal in mind:

"I want to mainstream erotica."

Note to shrinking violets: Erotica is considered art (literature, music, film, etc.) that includes substantial sexually arousing scenes, often in detail. Many see little difference between it and pornography, but connoisseurs insist erotica is more highbrow, not explicitly describing sex for sex's sake. To paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, you know it when you read it.

Since its start, the salon has grown to 40 to 50 attendees, both faithfuls and newcomers, with a dozen courageous enough to read each time.

"Every single month, it's different," says salonniere Mayer, by way of introduction to those who have paid $10 for two-plus hours of love letters, sensual poems, comic monologues, and graphic pillow talk. "Sometimes you'll squirm, sometimes you'll cry," says this mother of a college grad, divorced and "independent" (which she prefers to "single"). "Who knows?"

Mayer, dressed smartly in slacks and sweater, black-framed reading glasses and thick, wild brown hair enveloping her face, likes to say that if her "chosen mother," a 92-year-old friend, is able to present her own erotic writings, albeit under a pseudonym initially, anyone can.

"Don't be shy," she urges in one post on her blog, www.theeroticliterarysalon.com.

Fewer of us are.

Consider: Harlequin, bastion of buxom women, chiseled men, and romance, launched Spice Books in 2006. The erotica imprint that targets women has grown from an initial five titles to an anticipated total of 42 by year's end.

At the Chester County Book & Music Company, the erotica section takes up two sizable bookshelves, and Amazon features 23,522 items under the subcategory, including Guilty Pleasures (one in the best-selling "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series), the Vladimir Nabokov classic Lolita, the writings of Anais Nin, and Zane's mass-appeal urban erotica novels that feature African American characters and have garnered attention in the New York Times.

"Every sexual human being wants to engage in fantasy," said Meghan Aborn, a relationship and sex therapist for the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. Erotic lit "is going to act as a vibrator for the mind, and it's going to be a break from daily life."The salon has few rules on what's read. Anything goes: original or classics, playful innuendo or every explicit detail, what Mayer calls the "edgier work."

"Nothing shocks me," she said. "I've heard it all, truly heard it all."

Readings are limited to five minutes, and Mayer likes to jump-start the evening. This time, she read a piece from the popular play The Vagina Monologues that rants against douches, pelvic exams, and thongs. The program continues with pieces on sexual and political gratification, a story on a gay bathhouse orgy, epistles on unrequited love, a scene with S&M.

Cassendre Xavier, 41, of Drexel Hill, who works the door, is the featured guest this night. The founder of the Black Women's Arts Festival performs music and reads a series of original poems, "Panther," "Mango Breast," and "Peach Mountain."

Xavier is nervous. ("I was talking about my body, about pleasure, stuff I hadn't said to most people in my life," she said later.) But the audience listens attentively, even solemn-faced at first, before loosening up and laughing appreciatively at comic riffs, issuing a few welcome catcalls at the naughty, naughty scenes.

If it all sounds a little too weird, Xavier and others say that just because the language here is provocative doesn't mean "I don't hang out with my nieces on weekends and bake cookies. . . . We have families and jobs and partners, even if we have three partners," she adds, slyly.

First-timer Michael Thummel, 33, of Mayfair, said he was looking for a fun night. The clinical supervisor for a substance-abuse program in Philadelphia read one of the sweeter - and printable in this newspaper - pieces, a poem about a friend.

"You put your hand in mine," he reads. "Bodies locked together / Jigsawed origami / My arms, my unconscious / Enveloping your anima / With adoration / Patiently anticipating / Counting seconds until / I will taste your kiss / Again."

"You're not so weird when you're around everybody who's weird," Thummel said. "And if it gives you a couple of ideas to have fun at home with, that's not a bad thing."

The salon grew out of Mayer's dissertation research, in which she explored solutions for postmenopausal women with stalled libidos, she said. "I realized I was very comfortable with erotica," said Mayer, who has a fledgling private practice in Fitler Square and calls her philosophy The Ageless Sex Life. "But some women are not. I want women to have choices."

She envisioned the salon as a safe enclave for women, but opened to both sexes when the initial location, another bar, balked at excluding men. Now she attracts 50-50. Surprisingly, men often write and read innuendo, she said, while women lay it all - and we do mean all - out there.

Some use pseudonyms, fearful of a spouse's reaction. Others bring the whole family.

Serena Kaschak, 35, of Huntingdon Valley, said she cherishes free expression, the subject of sexuality included, though some S&M stuff offended a bit. Still, she said, the salon is "done in a way that's surprisingly comfortable. I don't feel any creepiness."

Mayer, the daughter of Austrian immigrants, grew up with free access to books. "I read explicit sex in novels at a very young age," she said, recalling Henry Miller's works. She moved on to erotic poetry and as an adult pursued the Kinsey Reports and other academic tomes on human sexuality.

In 2000, Mayer said she became acutely ill (she'd rather not publicize the condition). "I came out of it knowing exactly what I had to do in my life": Study sexuality.

In 2009, Mayer completed her doctorate from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.

Salon devotees praise her for the space she has created. "I think Susana is doing a very brave thing," said Ludovici, who has shared his first sexual encounter and love letters to a lady met on a cruise.

While an Erotic Literary Salon may be unusual, hot and heavy literature is gaining a leghold at a time when the culture is becoming "more and more desensitized" toward sexual images, sex therapist Aborn said.

Shows like Sex and the City, Dirty Sexy Money, and The Cougar hardly raise an eyebrow. Posting a revealing picture to Facebook is nearly a rite of passage. And did anyone care about last summer's threesome on the Calvin Klein billboard?

The harsh economic times make escapist literature particularly appealing, opined Michael Ray Smith, communications studies professor at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C.

Women in particular, he said, "are feeling a need to be empowered, and they want to explore literature that has this dangerous quality, danger and pleasure. It's providing an outlet, a release, but it's also giving them a chance to have an adventure."

Contact staff writer Lini S. Kadaba at 215-854-5606 or Lkadaba@phillynews.com.

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From Portfolio.com

http://www.portfolio.com/industry-news/media/2010/03/01/local-newspapers-lead-the-way-over-big-newspapers/index.html

What Newspaper Crisis?

by Katie
Kuehner-Hebert Mar
01 2010

The economy and the Internet are being blamed for killing
big-city newspapers, but community publications are doing a pretty darn good
job of surviving, thank you very much.

Bart Adams, publisher of The Daily Record in Dunn, North
Carolina, likes to think his newspaper is successful because it practices
something he calls refrigerator journalism. “People can clip out photos and put
them on their refrigerator, so I think we build a real connection with the
community,” said Adams, whose father, Hoover, founded the paper in 1950.

In
fact, Adams’ strategy is to try to put as many names and photos of Dunn’s
10,000 residents in the paper as much as possible—The Daily Record has even kept the bygone days tradition of
publishing everyone’s birthday.

“People can read about [President] Obama pretty much
anywhere, but where are they going to read about their neighbors and friends?”
Adams said.

That hometown touch and the fact that no other media outlet
focuses so much on its community is a major reason why The Daily Record and its two sister
papers in nearby towns are holding up relatively well. The company's ad
revenues fell in 2009, but the Record Publishing Co. still made money because
it cut several jobs, Adams said. Overall, earnings were slightly lower than in
2008, although the privately held publisher would not say by how much.

Like many community newspapers across the country, Adams’
papers are turning out to be more resilient than many large metropolitan
newspapers, which are struggling like battleships to turn their businesses
toward calmer and more productive waters.

Small newspapers aren't impervious to the recession, but they
are faring much better than big papers. Community newspaper revenue fell an
average 12.4 percent during the second quarter of 2009, according to the latest
survey by Suburban Newspapers of America and the National Newspaper Association. The group
halted its regular quarterly surveys later in the year, because publishers were
reluctant to share data during the recession. But the second-quarter figure
compared favorably with a 29 percent revenue decline for larger papers,
according to NNA data.

“The big problem for larger newspapers is that a lot of the
information they used to own, people can now get for free,” said Bill Reynolds,
media director for the Erwin-Penland ad agency in Greenville, South Carolina.
As a result, many dailies have had to cut good chunks of their staff and
streamline their numerous sections. Yet most are still saddled with outsize properties
and, for some, cumbersome distribution operations.

On the other hand, smaller newspapers have benefited from
localized content not reported elsewhere, and subscription rates for most have
remained robust, said Reynolds, who works with both metropolitan dailies and
community newspapers. Moreover, many community newspapers can fetch more than
twice the advertising rates of metropolitan papers in their region because they
can selectively distribute to neighborhoods that have “more buying power,” he said.

Andrew Olsen agrees. His family publishes four weekly
newspapers on the eastern tip of Long Island’s North Fork, and offers targeted
buys for specific neighborhoods or package deals for ads in all of their
papers. To diversify business, the Olsen family company, The Times/Review Newspapers in Mattituck, New
York, also owns several tourism-related publications, such as The Wine Press, a free
advertiser-supported guide to Long Island wineries.

Scot Kerr, president at Mediaspace Solutions in Norwalk,
Connecticut, said that most community newspapers do not have the huge debt
burden of many larger dailies. Plus, most smaller papers do not own their own
printing presses, and so they have the ability to seek competing bids from
outside printers.

But
like larger papers, community newspapers have also been hit with declining
classified-ad revenue due to job sites such as Monster.com and, more recently,
Craigslist.com that enables people to list for free items they want to sell. To
make up for the lost revenue, The Daily
Record had to cut one of the two people on its classified staff,
Adams said. However, he expects to see some pickup in classified advertising
after the recession, as businesses in the small town generally still use his
paper to advertise for local jobs instead of using the more high-profile job
sites.

Another reason community papers hold up fairly well is that
they’ve historically been able to pay lower salaries for editors and reporters.
Many hire entry-level staff, but Olsen said The Times/Review Newspapers has
recently been able to attract a number of seasoned journalists laid off by
larger dailies who were willing to accept less than “top dollar.”

Olsen’s papers are subscription-based, but some community
newspapers are free and rely mainly on advertising revenue, such as the San Diego Community News Group, which
publishes separate papers for five San Diego neighborhoods.

The group’s publisher, Julie Hoisington, said that her papers
generally have no problem attracting targeted ad buys for tony
neighborhoods—particularly from real estate brokers selling expensive
beachfront property or high-rise condominiums in San Diego’s downtown. Even
with the hit businesses took because of the housing bust, her company was able
to break even because the papers cut their pages from 40 to 24 to match falling
ad buys. Readers, who get the paper for free, didn't complain.

“When the going gets tough, we always fare better than the
bigger papers because we have more flexibility within our model to cut
expenses,” Hoisington said.

Scott Hettrick in Arcadia, California, is trying a newer
model: an online-only publication, with video content that he produces himself.
Hettrick started ArcadiasBest.com in 2007, and has recently
posted videos featuring local figure skater Mirai Nagasu, who is competing in
the Winter Olympics, and actor Henry Winkler, discussing his Hank Zipzer
children's book series. “Judging from Google Analytics, the videos are probably
the most looked-at things on the site,” Hettrick said.

Hettrick,
who sends out 3,500 email newsletters each week promoting new content, expects
to post a profit this year and by next year fully recoup the roughly $25,000 in
startup costs for the site and his video equipment.

Michael Ray Smith, a professor of communication studies at
Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, said that the local
connection remains the principal selling point for community papers, because
it's something that can’t easily be replicated by larger competitors. Smith
lives in Dunn and holds up The Daily Record
as a prime example.

“There is a real sense of community with this paper—it’s very
grassroots and a lot of people’s voices are heard,” Smith said. “The bigger
papers are going to hyperlocal, but this kind of paper pioneered it, and people
here feel like it’s really their paper.”