It's official: I'm obsessed with Lena Chen

A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about the cult of virginity and my mixed feelings about it-- not wanted to judge it but still thinking it's kind of tragic that these kids torture themselves with their inborn desires.

Lena Chen is mentioned in the article as the ultimate anti-virgin. She's a junior at Harvard and has a blog. She's also something of a sex-columnist-extraordinaire. Her blog ostensibly began so that she could write about her lush and prolific college sex career, but now it seems much consumed with dealing with the tractor beams the public eye seems to have locked upon her.

Last week, she posted this picture on her Tumblr, The Ch!cktionary. She's ruffled quite a few feathers with it because she is not, by any stretch, a porn actress. She's a 20-year-old sociology major at arguably the most prestigious university in the land. And yet that is a very... very... VERY dirty picture.

And what do I think of it? As if you really had to ask. Of course, I think it's probably the hottest thing I've ever seen. Oh, wait-- I mean, I think it's a beautiful expression of human sexuality.

Regardless, the photo fascinates me in that it's acquired an even more connotatively palimpsestic aspect than most photos ever could -- sexy or otherwise. She says that she never expected it to be controversial or incendiary at all... and yet she calls herself "a living, walking, subversive abomination" in a more recent post. The photo, in and of itself, is so simple-- just a close-up of her little urchin face. As she says, she's not even naked in it. And perhaps it's nothing more than the fact that her face is so very child-like that throws us all for a loop. But I (*wink*) doubt it.

The photo suggests so much. This is a debauched woman. A woman who is happily so. Look at her eyes. She looks like she's never been so turned on in her life. She's staring straight at the camera with all the defiance of the "Demoiselles D'Avignon". She owns that cum -- she caused it and she's proud of it and she looks like she could eat the guy behind the camera alive.

And yet it winds up on Gawker, being called an "overshare" and she tells us some concerned soul wrote a letter to her parents, advising them to find help for her. But then, Susannah Breslin, of Reverse Cowgirl fame says this: "The fact of the matter is that writing about sex isn't easy. Chen is a human being. And while I won't be posting photos of myself with a pop shot on my face anytime soon, you gotta respect the girls who have the balls to do it. Why? Because you don't."

So, folks, what is it? What is it about little Lena's face all smeared with seed that has some of us worried for her mental health and/or her immortal soul... and some of us cheering her as a feminist icon? In case you hadn't notice, I'm in Susannah's camp, of course. But more interesting than taking sides is figuring out why exactly the photo is controversial at all.

Is it because, deep down, we think porn-ishness should be left to its own arena? Is it because we think girls who are smart enough to gain admission to Harvard shouldn't be flashing their semen-stained panties all over tarnation? Is it because we're relieved when they do? Because, if a "smart" girl is such a "slut" (usually I use this word positively, but here I mean for it to carry its heaviest, ugliest connotation), she's not a threat? Or because she's all the more threatening for being both brilliant (which you can deduce rapidly from only a smattering of her writing, whether or not you agree with her) and depraved? Because no one can deny that a girl with that kind of fire in her eyes has AT LEAST as much self-respect as the most chaste among us, thereby defenestrating that why-don't-you-respect-yourself-enough argument?

Oh, I think she knew the photo would catch her some flack when she posted it. She had to have known. I mean, she'd just got done quoting Camus on The Ch!cktionary: "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." She's just owning her red harlot/"subversive abomination" nature, after all. She can hardly help it. My psychic once told me I've got a little bit of natural "fuck-you!" in my personality. Lena's got it in spades.

Truth be told, Lena seems to be having the college experience that I was far too big a kid to have had myself-- but always wanted. Yeah, I messed around with a few handfuls of boys-- and a couple girls. But, sadly, my sophomore year, I fell madly, nihilisticly in love with the boy who lived across the hall from me. He had a girlfriend, with whom he'd periodically break up and then come knocking on my door. But I always knew my white-hot, juicy love/lust for him was mostly unrequited. And when he finally told me (in so many words-- he was 19-- he basically just avoided me-- what else do 19-year-old boys do?) that there were no more hook-ups to come, I launched myself into a tortured three-year practice of brahmacharya. That's celibacy, for those of my readers not fluent in Sanskrit. Yep. It's true. Sexual bravado aside, I spent the latter two years of my college experience as an everything-but, re-virginized sad little mess. There was still kissing, of course, but I got called a cock-tease more than once.

Let this be a formal apology to all those boys I didn't fuck senior year in college-- I'm sorry! If I could go back and do it all again, I would have taken full advantage of every one of your sexual peaks. It's just that, at the time, my head was just too fucked for me to properly process being properly penetrated.

Three days after I moved to DC, I ran into the aforementioned heartbreaker. We hadn't really spoken since the opening reception for my senior art show-- he'd come up and clinked his beer bottle against mine. I didn't even know he lived in the area. It was the week before his wedding. He was still cute, though with far less hair (is it bad that I gloated a little that I hadn't gotten fat?). I was so glad to see him! In those first seconds of re-meeting, I felt a huge release of all the amorphous wistfulness I'd always felt every time he ambled into my head. His wife is lovely, by the way. I see them every now and again. He's a fantastic person-- and I recall so well why I was so enamored. But, blessedly, 10 years eroded the sexual charge and now we are free to be friends. Sometimes, it's good to be a grown-up.

Regardless, though, it's clear that my collegiate sexual education got derailed by the first of many boys who'd be destined to tell me that I'm cute, smart, fun and great in bed, but also that they were never gonna fall in love with me. I should put quotes around that. It's a real thing that people (yes, plural) say. To me. Fuck. Anyway, before I palsy off into self-pity...

What I mean to say here is that I'm obsessed with Lena Chen because she's yet another sex blogger whose life I envy. I'll be adding her to my blogroll because I think she represents a sort of logical outcropping of the type of feminism I've been espousing-- sex-positive, self-deprecating, funny and audacious. And heartfelt. I'm eager to watch as this woman develops a career for herself, post-Harvard. She says she's unmarketable. I think that's a crock of shite.

It would be tempting to think of her as a little sister of the spirit, but I have a hunch she's far more worldly-wise than I. Cum-faced or otherwise.

UPDATE: In strange six-degrees-of-separation news, a picture of Lena's current gray-area entanglement wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of my own high school (which is tiny, single-gendered and located in Nashville) can be found here. ...Wonder from which former Harpeth Hellion he might've filched such a thing...?

"Even/in rope restraints, you were a scorcher, sweetie," or Now this is my kinda love poetry

From Matthea Harvey's new book, Modern Life:

Terror of the Future/5

Technically, "lonely me" was a tautology.
No one had ever stuffed carnations
in my tailpipe or planted a symbolic
lipsticked kiss on the swingdoor
to my kitchen. When you appeared,
I knew I was in a race against the sun
before they took you away on a stretcher.
I spruced up the counters with spit
and a sponge -- I wiped my slot machine
mouth clean. I shut the door, locked it.
I shouldn't have -- you were just here
to shop -- but I was way past worrying
about the seven deadly sins. In the show
about the sea lion and natural selection,
he got scratches from his lover, too. Even
in rope restraints, you were a scorcher, sweetie.
The radio said we needed to repeople.
I should have given you a running start;
I gave you roses. I persevered -- I professed
the principles of capillary attraction,
made you a plaster-of-Paris statue of a peacock,
wrote hundreds of haiku. The odds on you
loving me were a thousand to one, but there you were:
nibbling my toes in your nightshirt,
kissing me on the mouth in the mudroom.
My chest felt like it had undergone mitosis,
it ached so. I marveled at the maple syrup moon --
it had a luster unlike any linoleum.
We watched the lake breeze lift the leaves
though the keyhole. Inventory was low
and we were out of holy oil. Helicopters
landed on the hospital roof
every hour then every half hour.

I've been dawdling through my first read of this book, not quite ready for all of its surprises to be played out. It fills the bowl of my mouth with its very loveliness. And though Harvey has approached new apocalyptic subject matter here, she does this thing-- what I love her for-- maintaining a tone somewhere between wistful amusement and amused despair with regard to the human condition. It's the healthiest mindset I know. The poem above comes from a series of almost-abecedarians. Here is some more about that. And for more poems, there's always this.

Goddamnit! How I want to steal that first line up there. I just might do it, too. Oh, and that candle flame of "slot machine mouth," too. So good!

Also, the poem "Free Electricity" in this book is quite possibly one of the sexiest poems every written. In a coquettish, doesn't-quite-know-the-extent-of-its-own-sexiness (except that it does!) kind of way. I'd include it here, but I already feel funny about posting one published poem without explicit permission. Though, I know, other bloggers do it all the time.

Irony-free love, not ironically free love

While I was in Honolulu last December for work, I spent most of my time off tooling around town with one of my colleagues, who is somewhere in the progression of her creative non-fiction MFA. There seemed to be two recurring themes in our conversations: whether or not irony was still a valid mode of communication, both in writing and in ordinary conversation... and the fact that she's rather ecstatically in love with a new-ish boyfriend. And then, this Saturday morning, I made coffee and then got back into bed to read Anna Moschovakis' incisive and remarkable book, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, and I found the following excerpt from "The Blue Book" section, which I felt like conflated those two strands of conversation. And she's masterfully crafted it, as well. Enjoy!

Many people change their names.
Afterward, they are not seen as different by most people.
They may have private or public reasons for changing their names.
They may change their names to buck or bolster tradition, for example.
(The change may or may not, in fact, buck or bolster tradition.)
Some people change their sex.
They may have private or public reasons for doing so.
Afterward, they are seen as different by most people.
Some traditions only become buckable with progress.
Sex is a noun that can be both active and descriptive.
A view of sunlight filtering through trees can seem corny or kitsch.
Sex seems to retain the ability to be experienced non-ironically.
This may be due to the doubling inherent in sex with another person.
Irony may be inherent rather than apparent in this doubling.
Heterosexual couples may experience a stronger/weaker doubling than homosexual couples.
Couples in which one person takes on the other's name seem to be addressing this doubling.
I wonder what it does for them.
Name is a word that can be both active and descriptive.
Like many people, I like hearing my name spoken during sex.
A feeling of intimacy after sex can often be mutual and sincere.
This can be true even in a setting of filtered sunlight.
Intimacy is only possible because people are seen as different.
My name comes from my father's side of the family.
I sometimes wish I had a different name, or no name at all.
I sometimes imagine what sex would be like in a world without names.


I really love the way Moschovakis is able to make these assertions without doubling back on herself, questioning herself, but, in the same space of this poem, leaves herself plenty of room for theorizing. I'm not entirely sure how she does that. And the seams between each line are so logical! And there are seams that connect different, non-adjacent parts of the poem together in a masterfully-planned sort of way. She is god to this poem in a way that I don't really see too often. And if you were to read the whole "The Blue Book" section, you being to notice that her clarity of thought and organizational structure emerge in a way that feels a little foreign and very exciting, when pushed into verse form. She is an algebrist (my spell-check makes me think I just coined that word) to this poem as well.

To anyone familiar at will with the lingo of the enneagram, I think I might characterize this poem as rather 5-ish. Its tone, I think, seems to be trying very hard to establish an intellectual distance between the speaker and the subject matter of sex... yet there is this just-below-the surface, powerfully emotive yearning for sincerity and connectivity in the context of the sex act itself. The reason this seems 5-like to me is because 5s are often characterized as being all head, no heart-- which I think is a pitiful misrepresentation of 5-ishness. It's just that, because big emotions often leave a 5 feeling drained, they have a difficulty processing them without establishing the aforementioned emotional distance. But that certainly doesn't mean that heart isn't thumping away under the nerdy surface, right? Anyway, perhaps this is part of why I've been so suckered in by the cool, aloof tone this poet adopts here. How does she do it???

The question we always asked in poetry workshops, when something really great turned up in class, was "Do you wish you wrote it?" And about this poem, and this book, really, I would say, unequivocally, yes. Apparently, she's giving a reading in Brooklyn as part of Sommer Browning's reading series at Pete's Candy Store at the end of the month, and oh, how I would love to go. I may, however, have to settle for going to hear her when she's in Baltimore in May. I found my voice getting tired as I was reading this book, the desire to hear them aloud was so great. Surely, she'll do a better job of it than I.

A valentine for Diamond Jim...and for Noah

Every so often, a Springer wins Westminster. And every so often, every Springer-lover in my family goes nuts. The only thing I don't understand is why Springers don't win every year, seeing as they are the best-looking dogs around. And this guy is no exception. Though, I think my Noah is at least as handsome as that fancy dog... and I don't know if James smells like corn chips or not, but certainly, that would give Noah an edge. And, if you can't tell the difference, Noah's the black-and-white one, James is the liver-and-white one with the dopey look on is face. All right. Fine. Noah's face is a little dopey, too. Part of the Springer charm.