Saturday Night’s Story Hour Kicked Ass!

The consensus here at Godless Perverts is that we’re feeling pretty damn proud of ourselves for Saturday night’s Story Hour.

At first, we were a little bit anxious about how things would turn out. We were expecting a low turnout because of it being Labor Day weekend, which means that half of the Bay Area has fled out to the Playa to do the Burning Man thing. In addition, the Bay Bridge is closed until early Tuesday morning. If riding BART is a pain in the ass under normal circumstances, it’s even worse when half the train is marvelling at this strange new experience of using public transit. So, we showed up at the Center for Sex and Culture a little pessimistic about how many people would show.

Boy, were we wrong. Not only did we have a large and enthusiastic audience, but the reading was one of the best we’ve ever done. We all went home glowing with satisfaction. Not only were all the pieces hot, moving, thoughtful, and honest, but they covered a really broad span of genres and voices. More than anything, we were pleased at how well-balanced the topics were, from critical essays to poetry to shameless smut. If you couldn’t make it to this one, we really hope you’ll make it to the next one. And tonight, you’re invited to hang out with us at Wicked Grounds Café for the Godless Perverts Social Club, an evening of informal socializing and snacking.

Here’s a quick summary of what our performers read on Saturday:

• M. Christian read a witty speculation about Jesus Christ’s cock: its size, foreskin (and lack thereof), and why exactly Christians get so very, very pissed off when you even start thinking about the fact that the Savior must have had one.
• Virgie Tovar‘s reading was a very hot piece of erotica about being a young Sunday school teacher who rents a room at a no-tell motel, masturbates in the tub for a while, then phones up “Pastor Tim” to come join her. It turns out that the Pastor is much kinkier and much more well-endowed than she expected.
• Molly Weatherfield (aka Pam Rosenthal) explored the complex, intertwined influence that religion had on her kinky sexuality — both for bad and for good — and how the God she grew up with was the ultimate top.
  
• Chris Hall praised the virtues of “unnatural” sex in an essay criticizing the naturalistic fallacy in sex-positive culture, pointing out that a lot of people — including himself — rely on unnatural means just to have a normal, everyday life. Science, he pointed out, has made sex a lot more fun and a lot safer than it used to be.
• Simon Sheppard, committed heresy against both Christianity and Pastafarianism with the ultimate piece of slash fiction, in which the Flying Spaghetti Monster picks Jesus Christ up in a bar and uses His Noodly Appendages to do unspeakable things to the Christian Savior. As they’re about to get it on, Simon gets a little meta and starts cruising Craig’s List for some action of his own.
• Victor Harris performed several of his poems, including extended critiques of God’s design sense, especially when it comes to putting the naughty bits and the waste disposal system so close to each other.
• David Fitzgerald read an excerpt from his latest book, The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion Book One: The Mormons. He covered the beginnings of Mormon polygamy, especially Joseph Smith’s tendency to get revelations straight from the lips of God that he needed to marry the wives or daughters of his close friends in the church. In some cases, the men had already been sent on extended “missionary” trips abroad; in others, either the men or the women objected so strongly that Smith recanted, telling them that he had been only testing their loyalty.
• Greta Christina took us straight back into the gutter with a story from her erotica collection Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More. It was a really hot treatment of erotic shame, featuring a young ex-nun, who still feels the need to be punished by her Mother Superior. She gets it by buying a schoolgirl uniform and going to a pro-domme to give her as much punishment as she can take, and more.
• Jen Cross closed off the evening with a wrenching piece from the viewpoint of a Mormon teenager reading an anti-masturbation pamphlet and wondering how the instructions apply to the things she does with her girlfriend — and why they don’t address any of the things her stepfather does to her.

We hope to see lots of you at the Godless Perverts Social Club tonight, and at our future events. Remember, if you want to be sure that you get notified, sign up for our mailing list.