"People are now leery of rendering shame of any kind," Mary Gaitskill once wrote in a Nerve essay. "But shame is a profoundly human experience, and we risk it every time we encounter a force bigger than ourselves."
Sex is complicated enough; who can blame us for wanting to ignore its unpleasurable kinks? Sexual shame is often debilitating, frequently ambiguous and always subjective. It's not easy to process, much less channel onto a page. But we think it's worthy of examination. Like a libidinal drill sergeant, sexual reticence, embarrassment and regret build our character, in and out of the bedroom.
For this issue, we asked some of our favorite authors and essayists — several of whom are making their Nerve debut — to write about a shameful sexual experience. In Grand Slam, Neil LaBute depicts one man's inability to reject a neighbor's advances. In Farmboy Riot, Alice Sebold examines how one woman's accumulated shame disconnects her sexuality from the physical realm. Benjamin Cavell examines the shame of a specific-yet-universal adolescent guy (yes, the "regular or large condoms?" conundrum is addressed). Neal Pollack remembers the night his sexual altruism went far beyond the scope of the usual pity fuck.
You might see yourself in some of these pieces; it might even hurt a little.
But we assure you that ultimately it's a good kind of pain. — Tobin
Levy
In
this issue:
Grand
Slam by Neil LaBute
"This is not the kind of woman I want to be out with, but I figured food is food and so I said 'Fine, let's eat' and now I'm living to regret it."
/fiction/
Farmboy Riot by Alice Sebold
"No matter how much noise he made, she never came. Not in any of fourteen states they meandered through before they reached the Pacific."
/fiction/
