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“[I’m] not sure what it says about myself or my work that I synonymize pleasure and horniness,” Down says, “but when Matt said the readings were meant to be about pleasure, my brain went to what could potentially be the horniest subsection of literature—fan fiction—and then, to the horniest subsection of the horniest subsection: Harry Potter fan fiction. Thankfully, there are thousands of entries online.”
Down kicked off the readings with an excerpt of steamy, dense prose that focused on a sexual tryst with Harry Potter character Neville Longbottom. “I considered some Draco and Harry stuff, but in all honesty, it was just too horny, and most of it concerned ‘school age’ wizards… so was a little unsettling,” Down continues. “So I settled for some soft core pansy Neville, Sex and the City-adjacent fantasy action that had some nice feminist inflections, despite using the words ‘her aching cunt’ to describe a children’s books character.”
Director, novelist, and Father Figure author Emma Forrest was up next, wearing slinky cream Paloma Wool trousers and a green Jacquemus top—“young brands,” as she put it. “I think I was hyper-aware that I was entering into a young person’s arena, and maybe that’s also why I read a piece that culminates in the embrace of the female aging process, an erotic thrill to being deemed a hag,” she says. Forrest entered the ring as one absolutely should, crossing the threshold and dropping to the floor for some energizing press-ups. “Having directed a movie [Untogether, starring Jemima and Lola Kirke], I like to block out the full use of a space.” She had arrived early to plan her entrance.
Charrière read a snippet of her forthcoming debut memoir, Ashamed. She chose a part of her second chapter, “Pardon My French,” where she explores her relationship with home as she moves to London from France to work at a hedge fund. “It ties quite nicely with the theme of pleasure,” explains Charrière, “because it’s about the agony and ecstasy of discovering a new city, working in your first job, and the excitement and freedom that comes with that…but there’s also all the pain and homesickness. It’s also about how terribly incompetent I was because I accepted this job in finance to follow a boy.”
Reading this early work was a terrifying and galvanizing experience for her. “My piece was a bit more earnest,” she says of her contribution to the night’s readings, “but there’s still a lot of pleasure to derive from that. I found the experience quite exposing. Getting into the ring, you feel naked. It’s like any form of sport…it pushes you to be better, to train more, to have endurance and consistency with your writing. I’m grateful to Matt for the invitation. I’ve gone through a rollercoaster of emotions since.”
“I’ve accepted at this point that writing a memoir is a real journey of self discovery, because there’s the book you think you’re going to write, the story that you’ve been telling yourself and the world. And once you start digging—especially because the book explores vulnerability and shame, as well as the themes in the lives of many women like fertility, dating, pretty privilege—trying to untangle the story you tell yourself versus the honest one is very hard.”
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