At In the Flesh we believe that queerness is a desire for knowledge wedded to the erotic. It is the assertion that there is no knowledge without risk; there is no intelligence without feeling; no discovery without love.
What madness is this? Do you ever see the New York you live in reflected back to you on paper or the screen? Scenes from your life, your conversations, your fantasy world? The voguers on the pier; the sweat shining on performers as they sing for you, dance for you, strip for you; the whispering in the bar, lips to ear, curled and open. What’s that you say? You hardly ever see that? What about the New York you lust after? Women standing in doorframes, the heat steaming them open like letters… In a time when gay activism has been hijacked by white hetero-normative combat and relationships, In the Flesh asks “How do you fight? How do you love? How do you live?” In the Flesh is a bridge. It’s about a queer* reality melding with a queer imaginary. What makes you analytical, erotic, maternal, spiritual, angry, activist, hustling, pulsing flesh. Send us your fiction, essays, poems, theory, photos, artworks, erotica, and book, music or event reviews. A Word on “Queer” We are not interested in queer as another identity to be consumed. We believe queerness is a desire for knowledge wedded to the erotic. It is the assertion that there is no knowledge without risk; there is no intelligence without feeling; no discovery without love.
New Flash Fiction from the talented brain of Mariam Bazeed.
His eyes are brown. Hazel, when it’s bright, when light floods the room overlooking the park. They remind you of your father’s. He looks vaguely like him all around. Face: fleshy, honest. Skin: br...
The intrepid Whiskey Blue delves into Vancouver's Drag King scene to bring you the low-down from one of the best: Ponyboy. Check out the interview.
If you go to Vancouver and say the name Ponyboy in any queer or artistic circle, it's likely your fellow queers and artists will know exactly who you're talking about. Drag king culture thrives i...
Fiction from our new author Laura Bridgeman!
Give it a read.
The girl’s small. Her hair is endless and black. Cascading her back. Yards of it. She comes into the stand and turns. Her head just reaches over the table. Her fingers are tiny stars. Flitting ov...
Help document #queer history, past and present, please support this documentary project - they've only got 2 days left to go: http://www.hatchfund.org/project/unknown_play_project_documentary_film
Celebrate #pride, help us capture and preserve #queer herstory!! Give today - only 2 days left: http://www.hatchfund.org/project/unknown_play_project_documentary_film
Love this piece from Erica Cardwell, just posted to In the Flesh.
"In Karyn’s honor, I refuse to be a 'strong' black woman. I don't want to redefine it or reclaim it, I want to destroy it. I want the courage to be able to say that I cannot handle some things. And that I can ask for help. And I demand for a world that not only will accept this, but will listen."
Homotextual
Erica Cardwell writes about silence in connection to Karen Washington's suicide:
"Here lies a complicated conversation surrounding silence. It truly demonstrates the abstract space of the individual, the shadow that seals the body in tight, discoloring our vision and making the world appear to exist very far away from us. A scrim used to protect and sometimes hide behind, but cannot always be removed. Her singular experience may never be able to be examined. The private qualities to mental illness. The darkest parts of vulnerability. The depth of repressed pain. These complexities are difficult to pattern or describe. They are real."
http://www.inthefleshmag.com/
Homotextual
Theodore Kerr's thoughtful and penetrating insights on a posterVirus poster that sparked a heated discussion on AIDS past versus AIDS present.
“I think no one will be shocked if I say that there is a hegemonic AIDS and a peripheral AIDS,” said curator Aimar Arriola in a recent interview, to which I responded, “You would be surprised.” ++...
We have a new writer in the house! Mariam Bazeed reflects on bathing and the body. #menstrualpicture
if you want to be pure again, when you are ten, and there is blood that sometimes runs down your thighs because your mom said that now you are a woman, there are things you need to do in a s...
In the Flesh loves listening to erotica in public! Private Commission is hot!
Yesterday, Commissioners gathered on a freezing Tuesday night in February to eat cookies and hear lewd and lascivious stories at Dixon Place's cozy lounge. It was the launch for the Uncensored Coll...
In the Flesh is NSFW. If you try to access our site from a work computer, this is what comes up:
Ella Boureau's article "Lesbians Who eat Their Young" picked up by HuffPost!
In June I sent out a story to be considered for Best Lesbian Erotica 2014, but I could not have imagined the tangled internal politics that would ensue. That fight is emblematic of a broader schism in the queer community, one that calls up all the old questions of assimilation vs. liberation.
Our friends over at the Lesbian Herstory Archives are having a benefit this week. Get some great queer art while supporting a good queer cause! http://bit.ly/19c5v0I
Above is a tiny glimpse of details from the work of just a few of the artists who have donated work to the benefit: (in order of appearance) Dana Gentile, Linda Stein, Nancy McCarthy, Thessia Machado, emily north, Julie Mehretu, Angela Dufresne, Michele Pearson Clarke, Deborah Bright, and Mette Winc...
New In the Flesh article! Aldrin Valdez on Guðmundur Thoroddsen's "Hobby and Work"!
In the Flesh's Aldrin Valdez published a review in ArtSlant Magazine of the artist Guðmundur Thoroddsen's Hobby and Work show at the Aysa Geisberg Gallery (running through December 21st). Below is ...
The Lesbian Herstory Archives is hosting an art benefit to celebrate their 40th year. Everyone with a raffle ticket will leave an original work of art. Check it out.
To participate in the raffle you must purchase a $140 ticket before the event (the 2009 event sold out).
One of our writers just had their first erotica ebook published by JMS Books LLC.
JMS Books LLC Maybe I'll Tell You A Bedtime Story [9781611529487] - GENRE: BDSM • Contemporary • Erotica • Fiction • Lesbian • Menage LENGTH: 9,418 words RATING: Toni has been in a relationship with Sonia for almost two years now, but she's kept one thing secret -- her love of erotic stories. One da...
Read Diana Cage's Notes on Smut for 3 excellent book recommendations!
In 2010 Google Instant began saving us two to five seconds per search. Before that time we were forced to type an entire word, sometimes even a whole phrase, before hitting send. Thankfully search ...
Open call for lesbian artists to participate in the Lesbian Herstory Archives art benefit. Apps are due Sept. 13, 2013.
To inaugurate the Lesbian Herstory Archive's year-long 40th anniversary celebration, we are holding an Art Benefit in the fall of 2013 at Alexander Gray Associates in Chelsea, NY.
Today, Chana Porter told me a joke:
“How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
“How many?”
“That’s not funny!”
I told her that I had heard it before, but with the word “lesbian” instead of “feminist” and she cried:
“That’s how I heard it too! But the last friend I told it to said she found it offensive and could I use the word ‘feminist’ instead of ‘lesbian’?”
Layers of Irony.
After a much needed period of latency In the Flesh has redesigned and relocated, with a little help from the inimitable web maven Alexis Clements. New content by Theodore Kerr, Chana Porter, Ella Sapristi, with much more to come.
July 16, 2013 Three Poems by Chana Porter ByChana Porter Sadie SchefferSpider and I So just like that, I’m in a room filled with ghosts. To paint you a picture, the room is fairly shabby, wall paper peeling, floor creaking with disrepair. The ghosts don’t mind, they’re busy setting up for a name da...
In the Flesh's cover photo
You can't disown me, I quit!
In this mock infomercial, professional spokeslady Mrs. Trixie Cane promotes the "I Disown Your Right Back" campaign in response to religiously-motivated familial…
New piece by Aldrin Valdez!
by Aldrin Valdez Enter Simon onto the Eagle’s rooftop July heat as visible as the smoke snarling from his cigarette wait no his cigarette is unlit Enter Simon with cigarette in hand like Janeane Ga...
No plans for Valentine's Day? Want a guarantee that you will kiss someone by the end of the night, but don't really want to wear pants?
What a coincidence. We know the perfect place. In the Flesh will be selling t-shirts, personalized love notes, and kisses at No Pants No Problem. A benefit dance party for VOCAL NY, Aids Action Now and Visual Aids.
Rebel Cupcake: Bevin Branlandingham's monthly flamboyant dance party for all shapes & flavors! THIRD (SOMETIMES SECOND) THURSDAYS! February 14th: No
Odd compliment #75: "I really enjoyed your reading. I think that's what inspired me to go to church this Sunday."
New Interview!
Cassidy Gardner of QUEEROCRACY.
Cassidy Gardner is the founding member of QUEEROCRACY, a New York City-based grassroots organization that promotes social and economic justice through direct action, community engagement and educat...
NYTimes accurately represents a certain kind of conversation queer politics is grappling with, but it seems like the focus on "self-definition" makes us look shallow and it kind of misses the point. The whole reason queer people talk this way is so that we can better deal with the real issues we face. Conveniently that part was left out.
Thoughts?
The new vanguard of gender activists wants a broad, inclusive way to describe sexual minorities.
New interview with Sarah Schulman on her book Israel/Palestine and the Queer International is up on Fullstop! For the complete version, go to In the Flesh.
These are the basic principles of organizing: you have to have a goal that’s winnable, do-able and reasonable, and you have to have a way of winning it. You can’t repeat strategies that don’t work.
Kathy Acker on Bookworm in 1992. "The values of the writers for the NYRB have very deeply to do with class. We're in a war. A lot of the writers who dare to do other things besides write 'properly', besides write 'elegantly' are in a war, but we've never announced the terms of this war".
Kathy Acker on Bookworm from August 31 1992, discussing the "Portrait of an Eye" collection.
Do you have a license for your vagina?
Blog update! New hilarious/crying microplay by Eric Borlaug.
a by Eric Borlaug POLICE OFFICER Papers please. BRIDGET Which ones? POLICE OFFICER Do you have a license for your vagina? BRIDGET Oh, yes. Here you go. POLICE OFFICER This is your menast...
That awkward moment when you realize that straight girl you think is cute looks exactly like your favorite genderqueer pornstar.
from Election reading in October.
We talk with our eyes closed.
Topside Press is holding a novel manuscript competition. No submission fee, publication by Topside and $1000 advance if you win. Sounds pret-ty good.
Submit by December 31st, babies!
The winner of the 2012 Topside Press Novel Competition will get a publishing contract, a $1000 advance, and $1000 towards a promotional tour.
New Poem, by Debbie Hu! The Hate Nipple, which was read by Nika Mavrody at our last event.
"THE HATE NIPPLE
the ambient nipple
i wanna slurp it
yup i wanna sublet that nipple for the summer"
by Debbie Hu you wanted to sit in the sun & because you are unfit- fully my Muse I “where did the sun go?” you wanted to sit in the sun so we sat on a bench. I loved it, there was e...
The soundtrack to last night's event is up. If you didn't get a chance to come out, you can get still get a taste.
A mix for those ugly days.
TONIGHT: ITF will ask what is the ugliest thing you have every witnessed/participated in/been subjected to?
The Bureau (BGSQD) has only one more day left on their Lucky Ant campaign. It's now or never, folks! Donate or forever hold your piece.
The Bureau of General Services Queer Division (it's a bookstore) is raising money on Lucky Ant to open their first permanent location!
Our friend, artist and activist Camilo Godoy, sat down with us to talk about borders. Specifically: detention centers and queer love. Read the Interview!
Interviewer: Ella Boureau In the Flesh: I’m sitting here on November 27th, 2012 with artist and activist Camilo Godoy who just received a Queer Art Mentorship fellowship with Carlos Motta for his w...
Remember that morning you woke up on your friend's couch and realized with a sudden flush, you'd worn out your welcome several weeks prior? And you needed to find a job and an apartment, like, right now?
That's kinda the bind that the Bureau of General Services Queer Division, the only queer bookstore in NYC, is in at the moment. They are looking for a permanent home (aren't we all?) and they need your help to get dis rent money. Please donate.
The Bureau of General Services Queer Division (it's a bookstore) is raising money on Lucky Ant to open their first permanent location!
That hole in your stocking is cute.
Boody & Le1f - Soda (Official Video)
From the Liquid EP [Boysnoize Records BNR088] Buy the EP on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/liquid-ep/id572217983 Directed by Sam Jones - http://sb...
Anyone else noticed all these girls running around wearing foxtails? Or is it just In the Flesh?
I was running up the subway steps at Franklin Avenue when I looked up to see a bushy foxtail bobbing above a round, teenage bubble butt. This was maybe the fourth or fifth time I’d seen one o...
We
Contributors to the online queer zine In the Flesh performed at the Bureau last night to a great crowd that filled the space. The Bureau warmly thanks the readers: In the Flesh founder Ella Boureau, Glenn Marla, TL Cowan, and Banjela Davis (aka Zachary Frater)! We hope to host In the Flesh for anoth...
A young woman in argyle socks and pink underwear jumps on her bed while popping watermelon gum. Nothing can stop this weightlessness. She will never come down. Her watermelon bubbles get bigger and bigger. Her hair flies about her face. Then the bed breaks. She crashes to the floor and becomes one big bruise. To console herself, she turns to the infinite wisdom of the internet and stumbles upon In the Flesh's new F**K! section where she can lose herself in Rage and Erotica. What are you waiting for?
HOMOTEXTUAL
This post by Ted Kerr is Beauty, babe.
Our sexuality-- as a generation-- is ghostly, ambivalent, neurotic... but it's totally fine okay? Let's talk about something else.
Ok, Ted. You're right. In the Flesh wants to answer you.
I want to talk about how silent people are about HIV, or worse, how when they do open their mouths they are often stuck in a crisis paradigm circa 1984, or have not updated their knowledge since the...
New York, NY
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