By Rebecca Waese
A hotpot of queer delights warmed the spirit of an enthusiastic crowd on Friday night at The Wheeler Centre in “Stirring the Pot: A Feast of Erotic Storytelling and Performance.” Steaming up the Spring Fling season, a sextet of writers and artists shared their written, visual and performative erotica in what may have been the wildest book launch celebration on record.
Host Zoë Coombs Marr guided the audience through the ‘feast’ with warm, friendly banter, at turns, encouraging and berating the audience for not buying enough books, but most importantly celebrating the love, lust and intimacy that the writers and artists brought to the stage.
First to simmer was writer Dylin Hardcastle, author of three books, including the latest, A Language of Limbs, which has been optioned for film with Curio (Sony Pictures). Dylin’s work reminded me of an Australian Jeanette Winterson with a little Hélène Cixous; it was direct, thrumming and tender as they read “the horniest parts” of their new novel. There was a revelatory moment in which they moved beyond feeling shame at their pleasure, to a proud release: “I scream for all the times I was quiet.” Grief was a recurring motif in “Horny for Ghosts” as the speaker was bereft, sobbing into a birthday cake, realising they are older than their lover will ever be.
Next in the pot was Ella Baxter, author of New Animal (2022) and WOO WOO (2024), a self-proclaimed celibate single mother, who decided it was time to re-articulate her sexuality, first online, and then at the gym with a pair of identical twins. I loved the expansiveness of her fantasy as she then “let her queerness take a turn” ending up with a trans woman sucking her nipple and reading Sappho in her lap at the Pilates studio. Think Anais Nin at the gym with hyperbolic cock fantasies; certainly, something to spice up the moments of single-Mum-dom.
Adding sweetness to the flavour was Bebe Oliver, a Bardi Jawi award-winning author, poet and illustrator, who confided (with a blush) that it was his one-year wedding anniversary and shared a beautiful poem called “Fireflies in His Hair.” He read from his debut solo poetry collection, more than these bones (Magabala, 2023), and his upcoming release, If This is the End, (released in November 2024). His work spoke of his exploration of his queer First Nations identity with modern-day and Roman allusions, likening a lover from a one-night stand to Neptune and claiming, “I’m not an erotic storyteller; I’m a Blackfella.”
After intermission, Esmé Louise James, a British-born Australian sex historian, author, and TikTok podcaster shared some sexy titbits about famous men from history from her book, Kinky History. Whilst good for playing trivia, her assemblage of facts about Mozart’s proclivities, Victor Hugo’s penchant for sex, and the Earl of Rochester John Wilmot’s undercover work as a faux gynaecologist left me a little unmoved. James’ podcast Kinky History on TikTok has over 2 million listeners, so clearly there is an interest in this field, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
Adding a completely different flavour was Xanthe Dobbie with the question of the evening, “The Future is Now but where are the Sex Robots?” Dobbie, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher of queer and feminist contemporaneity, added humour and audacity with their insistence that the future has not delivered on its promises from Y2K days, of flying cars and, most importantly, sex robots. They want “robots Stonewall”, “customisable AI intimacy”, even a sex bot for Grandma, in a hedonistic vision of the future where “the arts gets so much funding.”
Last to stir the pot was Kitty Obsidian, Proud Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi nonbinary performer, who according to their Facebook page, calls themselves, “Fierce, fat and fAboriginal,” and “Aggressively Queer.” Without any words, Obsidian revealed their erotica through the art of striptease. Winning Victoria’s NAIDOC LGBTQIA+ person of the year in 2022, Obsidian teased the audience from quiet curiosity into a loud chorus of cheers and cat calls, turning burlesque dance into a space for a voluptuous queer body that presses conventional boundaries of desire.
The evening lived up to its name and offered a feast of fantasies and erotic storytelling for a proud and hungry LGBTIQA+ community. If this is a meal you have been longing to taste, you would consider yourself lucky to have had a seat at this table.
