On Tuesday, July 26th at 5pm PST, the A+ Read a Fucking Book Club met for our inaugural session on a super mini pop-up Discord Server. Chris Belcher, author of Pretty Baby: A Memoir, joined us for a Q&A that was honestly, just really fucking riveting, okay?

Thank you to everyone who came out and especially to the folks who asked such smart and engaging questions.  And if you’re hoping we’ll announce the next A+ Book Club book and meet soon…stay tuned!

Nicole: So in terms of how things are going tonight, I think people are still joining us, so it would be great if we could wait a couple minutes, but in the meantime I want to introduce Chris!

Chris Belcher is the author of Pretty Baby: A Memoir, which is our first ever A+ Read a Fucking Book Club Book! And honestly, if you haven’t read Drew’s interview with Chris, I’d recommend it (after the meet though here it is).

Thank you so much for joining us tonight Chris. I devoured Pretty Baby and I’m really excited for this!

So, I’m going to do just one little thing so that I can turn @ChrisBelcher ‘s name a different color from everyone else’s so that you can see her in the chat more easily, and then we can get started! Until then, 90’s chatroom vibes.

[There is some small talk, including references to 90’s chatrooms.]

Alright, I’m back! I really appreciate that this is some folks’ first time on Discord — this is also our first attempt at hosting a chatroom-based book club!! So thank you for bearing with as we learn as we go. Basically, I think the best way for this to go is if we take turns asking questions so that everyone can follow along at a reasonable pace. So I’m going to ask that you feel free to jump in with a question when we ask for questions, and then once the q’s are asked, we give the chat some breathing room for discussion, and move along in that way, if that makes sense. (Please tell me if this does not make sense.)

So, is there anyone who has a question they’d like to open this book club meet, with?

Or @ChrisBelcher I don’t know if you have any questions for us!

Chris: This is great, I’m so happy to be here, thanks for having me! I will let y’all start, and then maybe yes, jump in with some questions of my own. I would really love to hear about what parts of the story resonate with other queer folks, how people’s experiences growing up, coming of age, diverged from mine. Lots! But y’all first!

[several people are typing]

Nicole: the tension of watching people typing!! ❤️

[several people respond with laughing emojis]

gina: i was particularly interested in the intersections of your lived experience in sex work and then your theoretical academic work – i would just love to hear more about the ways in which those experiences and frameworks butted against one another, and / or the resonances between them ?

LaFlaneuse: As a recovering academic (I left 10 years ago), I really enjoyed the description and orientation towards labor in both sex work and academic work. How does this book being published change how you navigate your own labor moving forward?

gina: loving our shared energy here!

Chris: Yes, totally. In terms of theory/what I was studying during the time I was in graduate school, it was mostly in the realm of queer theory, so I was engaging in the classroom with a lot of material that WAS about queer sex, power, BDSM even sometimes. But even though the scholars I was reading were all theoretically interested in these topics, there was always this remove. Like they might engage with sex on the page, but there was a divide – they wrote about sex, but we never saw them talk about their own experiences. So I really did feel at odds, often, with my lived experience and my studies, even if my studies were progressive and feminist

Nic: tbh i haven’t read your memoir yet bc i’ve been absorbed into cinnanon smart’s 2nd book, but it’s next on my virtual list! i grew up thinking i was faking my life as mostly straight, which i didn’t realize until i turned 40. now (at 41) i’m loving my life and happy to embrace being a lesbian. can one come of age twice??

I am really interested in this idea that there can be a “life of the mind” that doesn’t account for the lived reality of the body. I think that’s bullshit, and it circulates a lot in academia, in my experience. Like, forget your body, forget your material needs, flourish in the mind.

gina: that makes a lot of sense. as an academic myself, this is something i’m always negotiating. (not to turn this into a book recommendation thing, but aaron kunin’s “love three” does an incredible reading of renaissance poetry through his identity as a sub)

MetalQuin: I’m impatiently waiting for my library copy!

Chris: This book being published changes a lot for me in terms of my labor. I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable advertising for new sex work clients, because it’s too easy to find my legal name, etc. It’s a safety concern. There’s also the concern that I’ll go back to campus and have to deal with folks (students, colleagues, administrators) who know some pretty intimate things about me based on the story I’ve chosen to tell. All of that was ultimately worth it to me, when I did the risk calculus on whether or not to publish this work.

Chris [in reply to Nic]: My book is about coming of age twice! And coming out twice! And figuring out my gender and sexuality over and over and over again (it’s ongoing haha). I don’t think we ever stop coming of age. Especially not queer folks. We have room to keep exploring the possibilities of our sexuality and gender. They’re not as proscribed. We don’t “reach” the end.

Carmen [Autostraddle EIC]: (i just wanted to say that I really felt this, and even though I left academia it’s a conditioning that I still struggle to unlearn)

Nicole: That’s really interesting. I was definitely interested in the decision-making process around publishing your story / going public with the book itself, especially because that’s such a major source of tension in the memoir.

Camwise1: I am curious about the timing of writing your book (as in the year 2022). Do you think your book would be received differently if you had published it even just 5 years ago?

Btw, i loved your book and didn’t want it to end

Chris [in reply to Nicole]: Yea, part of my reason for pursuing this book was material. I wasn’t making much money as an adjunct and I wanted to find other ways to write. At the same time, it was symbolic of breaking free from the constraints academia put on me in ways other than material. I was like… am I really not going to write the kinds of work I want to write for THIS job. Because I’m afraid of losing THIS? At the end of the day, I wrote into the fear of losing the job.

[several people are typing]

JD2: I think this idea within academia and broader society that one could “forgot ones body” is very much tied to a certain framework of viewing the body and mind as separate with the body inherently lesser. What is interesting is how research into glial cells and the immune system illustrate that the body mind is united and can’t be split apart. So that whole mind body divide is just biologically inaccurate. Theres a scishow video on glial cells and Ben Barres on youtube if people want more information on both a cool scientist and glial cells.

Chris [in reply to Camwise1]: I love this question. The sex workers rights movement has made serious strides in the public consciousness over the past five years, I think. Unfortunately, some of that is related to laws that really harmed sex workers (FOSTA/SESTA) that galvanized a movement and pulled non-sex workers into the conversation. I know from speaking with my students that things are changing. Five years ago, my students wanted to debate whether or not sex work should even exist, or if it should be criminalized to the point of making the work disappear (which… isn’t ever going to be a thing, it can just be made more and more unsafe). Now, they want to talk about how to mitigate risk. It’s a different environment, at least on a fairly progressive college campus.

But I needed Me Too to write this book as well. I had a lot of realizations about the things I’d experienced as a sex worker when I saw others come forward with their own stories of abuse. I recognized my story in the stories of others.

LaFlaneuse: (I love that you chose memoir as a way to break free from academic constraints on writing btw. In the book it’s so clear how you’re grappling with mapping theory onto lived experience and back and finding endless contradictions. I don’t know if that would have been possible in fiction.)

Chris [in response to JD2]: Oh, this is such an interesting framework to think through this duality!

gina: perhaps related to that, @LaFlaneuse , I’d be interested in hearing if and how writing the memoir, narrativizing your experiences in this way, changed (or didn’t change) how you view those experiences –

Chris [in response to LaFlaneuse]: Yes, absolutely. I heard another writer talk about this once (T Kira Madden, whose book Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is incredible) – that once you take a memory and make it into a story, it will never function for you as a memory again. You’ve made the story, and the story will stick. Then I think about further: you take that story and circulate it to readers, they interpret it and talk with you about it. What do you have then? It’s probably something pretty far from what once only lived inside you.

Carmen: Oh wow.

Nicole: YES I remember this! But I can’t remember where T Kira talked about this. It reminds me of this little Alison Bechdel drawing I saw once, too, of her showing her mother her book and her mother saying “you got the wallpaper wrong” which just points to how tricky memory can be to deal with in writing, and how mutable and open to suggestion our memories are.

gina [in response to Chris]: that is FASCINATING (and i loved the madden) – i had thought a bit about how the imposition of a teleological narrative might change how things mean, but hadn’t at all considered the…inherent collectivity of the memoir genre (which seems like a contradiction in terms but also makes perfect sense)

Chris: I actually think that writing the book also, in some ways, changed my self-perception. I noticed things about myself reading the audio book that I didn’t even know when I was writing it! Sort of terrifying haha but that’s for my therapist, not book club

gina: i teach a good deal of poetry, and i love how every work of aural performance is a work of interpretation in and of itself – that speaks a lot to me

Chris: Yep, I’m lucky I had my mom to “fact-check” some of the book, but she also didn’t challenge me on my perceptions of our lives when I was growing up. I know, for instance, that my sister and I remember many things differently, because we are very different people with different identities and frameworks for understanding the ways we grew up. That’s why my epigraph is her, saying I only remember the bad stuff haha. She loves the book though.

Nicole: Oh my gosh I did love that epigraph.

ambr: I really resonated with the feeling of having a public and private persona that was analyzed throughout the book. I’m in medicine and it feels like there are two parts of me, one I present to my patients, attendings and colleagues and one I present to my family, friends, lovers etc. When I was online dating I would rarely “come out” as a doctor until we had went on at least one date. I just started integrating my queer identity into my career (talking about my partner, wearing pride pins etc) because I want others to feel more comfortable doing the same. Part of me didn’t want to deal with old white men. But I think a deeper part of me felt that I already occupied enough marginalized identities in the work place that I didn’t want any more reason for people to discriminate against me. Do you think going forward you will continue to integrate different parts of your life in your work?

Chris [in response to gina]: I think that memoir as genre can impose meaning, or conclusion, upon lived experiences where those things don’t really exist (the purpose of a story and the purpose of a life are usually not the same!) It was important to me to translate memory into story without imposing my interpretations. I hope the book allows the reader to do that, to close the circle. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I think it has something to do with what T Kira says about story and memory!

gina: that’s really beautiful, and what a gift of trust to the reader –

Chris [in reply to ambr]: I hear that, and have definitely (as you know from the book!) kept parts of myself secret for day-to-day comfort, survival, etc. And all of that is and was totally valid. Now, I am happy that I can move into a new chapter of my life as a teacher having these parts of myself visible to my students. Partially because many students are sex workers or have done sex work, or even just had sex they felt shame about, or didn’t feel right to them, or are survivors of sexual assault. All of that’s there in my story. But it was a choice I made to make it visible, and I don’t think it was the only “right” choice. It was right for me to be closeted when I was, and it’s right for me to be visible now.

I also make it a point on day 1 of any class I teach to be out. Because when I was growing up and in college, knowing I had queer professors meant a lot to me. I came of age in a time when people thought that being queer was a recipe for a lonely life. Or a failed life. And a few years ago I may have thought we weren’t there anymore, and now we are living in a “don’t say gay” world. It’s fucking scary.

gina: teaching in the south, this resonates with me a great deal.

in that vein, has anything about the book’s reception particularly surprised you, or did you (try to or successfully) avoid having those expectations?

Chris: On the reception point, I am not sure yet! I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from queer community, and that’s beautiful. I am really interested in what my sex worker community will say about the book, and am looking forward to those convos. The book, I hope, is honest in its depiction of sex work as ambiguous, not some sex-positive expression of feminism haha, nor a wholesale bad experience or dangerous one in my life. That can be hard when we have movement work to do.

LaFlaneuse: I’ve been stuck on Pretty Baby and The Dream House as examples of what queer memoir can do in really different ways about making a record of how we live in our brains and our bodies. How did you think about representation, both of queerness and of sex work, as you were writing? Does it feel different now that the book is out and, to your earlier point, the stories exist in a space that isn’t yours alone?

Chris [in response to LaFlaneuse]: Absolutely. I wondered if I was the “right person” to write about sex work, wondered if my story would be used against sex workers (bc, again, it’s not a “happy hooker myth” as we call them). I think that in Deam House, Carmen [Maria Machado] does a great job of showing that her story is basically being thrown into a void, because stories about abuse in lesbian relationships aren’t readily available to us. There are many reasons for that (stigma, shame, lack of archive) that parallel the reasons that there aren’t complicated stories about sex work.

Nic: on your “don’t say gay” world point, i’m in academia in Eugene, which is gay enough that I feel out of touch with the rest of the country. like it’s weird here to not be gay. on the other hand, sex work is pretty quiet around here… highly suspect! would love to exist in a space where both are safe.

Nicole: That’s really interesting, especially when you talk about presenting personal stories / truths in relation to movement work. I wonder, and I think this is also in line with LaFlaneuse’s question maybe: What kind of self-talk or self-coaching or drafting/editing work you engage in when it comes to being honest, and emotionally honest in your writing and telling messy truths and writing complex narratives?

gina: yes! and what was it like working with an editor, as well as at an imprint of a big five publisher, in the framing of and final forms these conversations took in the book?

Chris: I was very much inspired by the idea that the work can’t get safer if we don’t acknowledge the ways it can be unsafe. I believe that, my politics account for it, and so I got ok with the honesty. There are definitely things that happened to me, growing up and in the dungeon, that I decided not to include in the book.

Nic: i’m so looking forward to reading your book ❤️

Chris: I also teach in a bit of a bubble, in California, at a private institution. But I think the last few years really show that those who would silence us are not slowing down, and they aren’t ceding ground, and they are finding ways to do more harm than we ever thought they could.

Ms Skippy: I grew up in Eugene and that’s incredibly accurate, going back decades. Though even in the Bay Area now “coming out” as a sex worker is still terrifying in many settings

Chris: My editor was incredible. I originally wanted this book to be a collection of essays, and she is the one who helped me see the ways that chronology could provide the reader with the lessons I wanted the essays to impart. Some of that probably is Big 5 energy, in the sense that it’s not as experimental and it wants to reach a wider audience than an indie press or non-profit press would expect or need

Nicole: I think, too, with a half hour left, this is a good time to bring Chris’s question back up: “I would really love to hear about what parts of the story resonate with other queer folks, how people’s experiences growing up, coming of age, diverged from mine.” In case anyone wants to share!

Chris [in reply to Ms Skippy]: Yeah, I mean I’ve been afraid to come out as a sex worker even within many parts of the gay community. There’s a real conservatism in much lesbian discourse, like the “gold star” hierarchy, and the ways bisexuals can be shamed, etc. etc.

[several people are typing]

Ms Skippy: The passage on guilt v shame in an academic space hit me so hard. I was almost tempted to skip ahead to that time period but the childhood chapters sucked me in and I’m glad I didn’t

Chris: Yeah, y’all tell me: what resonated? What felt totally divergent from your experiences growing up queer or coming out, etc?

La Flaneuse: I grew up in Texas and didn’t even understand my own queerness so I was wildly impressed at the way you navigated yours at such a young age. The passages about the church and expectations of femininity really resonated.

The image of the cheerleading hair bow definitely stuck in my mind!

Chris: It’s interesting writing about one’s childhood in such a way as to preserve the unknowing on the page from the perspective of an adult who’s had decades to reflect!

gina: also, as someone who presents as very femme but is queer af, i found your negotiation (apparently my word of the evening) of…the phenomenological experience of inhabiting differently gendered, roles so illuminating

Nicole: You captured the fumbling, nervous, inexperienced aspects of teenage sexuality so well that it was both riveting and EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE in a way I am absolutely in love with.

JD2: I found the description of your high school years to be interesting. I was sent to a small all girls boarding school in the middle of the Massachusetts woods for high school and so I never attended parties or other things often described by people who went to “regular” high schools. One of the parts that resonated with me was on page 88 and the comments your father made about your changing appearance. It reminded of both my own experiences as well as a panel from Fun Home.

Ms Skippy: I’m the same age as Chris, and growing up in a liberal college town was radically different for me. I know this wasn’t the default for my peers but my parents never assumed I was straight. When I came out to my parents as polyamorous in my 20s my mom said that she always thought I’d settle down with a man or a woman and she’d need some time to adjust to the both option. I still haven’t explicitly come out as a sex worker though.

Chris [in reply to gina]: Yeah, I’ve realized over the course of this book coming out and really reflecting on gender, that gender presentation to me always kind of just ends up being a tool for the job at hand. I know that’s certainly not the way that everyone inhabits gender or feels their gender, but for me, it’s sort of utilitarian? It can make money in certain ways, can attract gendered partners in certain ways. None of that feels inauthentic to me, somehow?

Ms Skippy [in reply to gina]: Yes! Especially contrasted with how Jess was percived

nic: i love this! feel like most everything i do is utilitarian

Chris: So uncomfortable haha! I did an event with Chloe Cooper Jones last week (her book Easy Beauty on disability and pain is incredible) and she described my book as a litany of embarassments haha

MetalQuin: I am definitely reading that!

gina: my library hold on that came in today!

Chris: Yeah, parental judgment was a big fear for me. I think particularly my dad’s, and I wonder how much of that has to do simply with living under patriarchy and feeling as a girl that my job was to look the ways that boys and men expected me to look

I still haven’t spoken to my father about my sex work. I told him about the book, that it’s about sex and sexuality and I don’t think it would help our relationship if he read it, and I asked him not to! If he chooses to break that boundary it’s up to him, but I’ve given him my preferences. So, even if you write a memoir about it, you can still take spaces for your own privacy and comfort if that’s right for you

Nicole: We’re just about 15 minutes away from the end here! Thank you ALL for what may be the best book club meeting I’ve ever been to @here this is your chance to ask any last questions, or Chris, if you have a final question for the group, I would also love that!

Metalquin: This has been awesome!

Chris: Yes, thank yall so much for the conversation. I guess if I had a final question, I would love to know what moments you thought were funny!

The jacket copy describes it as darkly-funny lol, so… is it?

Ms Skippy: I loved the story of your mom’s “lesbian” bitch haricut

ambr: wanted to save this for the end! A photo of my cat wondering why I’m not paying attention to him. Your book was really hard to put down. Thank you for your time today! [includes photo of a cat]

gina: thank you so much for faciliating, nicole, and thank YOU so much for both the book and for answering all of our questions, chris – this has been wonderful.

EFalcon: I loved the parts about which of your friends were going to get the strap on from Spencers, lol

Chris: LOL yeah, I lusted for those spencers sex toys so bad

Nicole: WHO DID NOT

LaFlaneuse: Also the part about your mom buying you a dildo of solidarity

Ea_p: Moms haircut for sure, and also any of the moments in True Colours because it just felt so painfully familiar I had to laugh

Nicole: oh that KILLED ME

and the note

Mumble-rampage: Yes! This part make me cackle but also smile because how sweet but also good lord how mortifying

Chris: Basically yall are saying my mom is the comedian here haha (I wouldn’t argue with that)

True Colors was one of the most special places. I really learned to be queer there. My fashion probably hasn’t recovered haha

LaFlaneuse: Also, how have we not talked about Catherine?!

Chris: How have we not haha?

LaFlaneuse: So curious about her reaction to the book!

nic: … who’s catherine? (i’m sorrrrrry!)

LaFlaneuse: It was a very nuanced portrayal of an ex!

Nicole: Yes! What’s it like to write a memoir knowing your ex plays a significant role in the book?
Sorry! Really coming in at the end here with these ❤️

Chris: It took a lot of care, that’s for sure.

I had to ask myself at all junctures if the parts with Catherine were really MY story (mine to tell)

I also had to be as kind as I could. I wanted to write her generously. I wanted to capture why I loved her, which can be hard to do when you feel pretty far from the falling

And I was also the asshole in some of the major Catherine moments, which makes it easier!

gina: this reminds me a great deal of what you said about the representation of sex work – and the care really showed in the extraordinarily nuanced presentation of catherine / the relationship more generally

Chris: Writing about the ways you hurt someone, or lied to them, or kept them in the dark can be hard, but if you don’t go there, you won’t have work that anyone can relate to, because we all hurt and are hurt.

Nicole: Wow. That’s real.

Chris [in response to gina]: Hasn’t yet had one! I’m also curious haha

gina: thank you again for such a wonderful conversation – hope y’all have beautiful evenings!

Metalquin: Thank you so, so much! This rocked!

Chris: Yes, thanks everyone! Such an honor to be part of this. I adore Autostraddle and y’all were great convo partners!

Ea_p: Thank you! I enjoyed your memoir so much, and it’s been such a cool experience to chat with you!

Nicole: Thank you so much Chris. This was really a rare treat!! And thank you all for joining in tonight! Your questions were so smart! And interesting!!!

nic: ty everyone! @nknhall [they/them] for hosting, @ChrisBelcher for attending!! y’all are beautiful. this was great!

Chris: Alright, bye everyone! Have a nice eve and I hope to join you here again as a reader next time!

Carmen: I just want to say how much I loved this opportunity, thank you to @ChrisBelcher and to all of you!

We have such special members, and getting to watch you all be brilliant together has been a real joy and highlight for me!

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