A Part of the Heart Can't Be Eaten

Tristan Taormino is a writer, speaker, sex educator, and host of the podcast Sex Out Loud. A former syndicated columnist for The Village Voice, she is the author of numerous books, including Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, Down and Dirty Sex Secrets, and The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. She is the founding editor of the annual Best Lesbian Erotica anthologies, editor of The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play, and the Erotic Edge, and coeditor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. Taormino has won four Lambda Literary Awards and eight Feminist Porn Awards, among other awards. She lives in Los Angeles.

Acknowledgments ix Conceived 1 Mrs. C's 12 Artichoke Hearts 15 First Time 22 The Bunk House 28 Buttercake 31 Sex Ed 38 The Beach House 45 Foxglove 52 P-town 57 The Priest's Brother 64 Mr. Meltme 69 Time in a Bottle 79 The Shower 83 Slutty 88 No Place Like Home 93 My Closet Has No Door 103 Queer Nation 108 Femme Is My Gender 115 Bombshell 122 Riley 129 Change of Plans 132 Daddy's Girl 142 Sailor's Berth 146 The Lesbians Upstairs 153 The Price of Our Redemption 162 Unity 172 Reggie Love 178 Paris 184 Scrambled Eggs with Bette Midler 193 The Wolf 199 Poppie 204 Fallout 207 A Night Like This 215 Pucker Up 219 Anal Sex Made Me 223 Adventure Girl 228 My Gay Boyfriend 234 Heart/Throb 239 Turn Me On 246 Buttman Is on the Phone 250 The Learning Curve 256 Feminist Gang Bang 264 Epilogue: My Father's Eyes 271

"How fortunate we are to have such a passionate and skillful writer who has chosen to share with us her many wonderful and varied romantic relationships and sexual encounters, and the wisdom she's accrued in the process. This is such a fun read!" - Kate Bornstein, author of (Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us) "Tristan Taormino's memoir is unabashedly, in-your-face, all-caps QUEER in the best way humanly possible. A Part of the Heart Can't Be Eaten is honest, vulnerable, wise, and at parts, heartbreaking. But there is strength amidst the heartbreak, and Taormino's message of queer acceptance and living without shame always shines through." - Zachary Zane, author of (Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto) "A stunningly beautiful memoir spilling the tea on coming-of-age queerness, pathos, and the pleasure of the century's end. It's my perfect time capsule and this is the perfect book." - Margaret Cho "With personal images, sincere prose, and powerfully intimate excerpts from her father's unpublished memoir, Taormino's text very much orbits around her relationship with her father. The woman emerging from the grief has become a powerful, inspirational, unapologetic sex educator and creative dynamo. A passionate memoir packed with emotional punch and enlightening glimpses of personal liberation." (Kirkus Reviews) "Taormino offers both a stirring tribute to her father and a moving acknowledgement that she 'came of age in a time of more visibility and acceptance than he could have imagined.' . . . Open-minded readers will love this no-holds-barred portrait of family ties and personal liberation." (Publishers Weekly) "A Part Of The Heart Can't Be Eaten is an entertaining and important historical document and what makes Taormino's story especially interesting is that she hails from the days before the internet took over. Her heyday was the 1990s, a time when sexual exploration could still be underground, so it had time to mature." - Stephanie Theobald (Daily Beast) "A Part of the Heart Can't Be Eaten is a captivating romp through Taormino's life. . . . This striking portrait of a bold, self-identified femme dyke is intimate, wise, and uncompromising. Taormino offers a kinky sex scene for every emotional gut-punch, sealing her place as a crucial voice in sex and a sharp narrator of both personal and political queer history." - Ro White (them) "With candor and clarity, Taormino writes about the journey to becoming a culture-shaping writer and thinker, sparing seemingly few details regarding sexual experiences that defined her, her days at Wesleyan, her femme identity, and her early work. It is often bluntly funny ('Writing and anal sex were my passions'), as well as highly sensitive, particularly in Taormino's recounting of her experiences with depression, with which she was diagnosed in 1993, and her relationship with her gay father." - Rich Juzwiak (Jezebel)