Christen Clifford

I am performing my own work in a Gallery for the first time

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:31:00 +0000

The Armory Show/Armory Arts Week and SITEfest present

CHILDPROOF C*NT

Two performance art pieces by Christen Clifford

Saturday March 6^th, 2010

4-5 pm

Grace Exhibition Space

840 Broadway, 2^nd Floor

646.578.3402

http://www.grace-exhibition-space.com/

Free

Fierce Attachment (Childproof) is a destruction performance in which Clifford destroys items meant to keep a baby safe.

Interior Scroll (C*nt) is a reimagining of Carolee Schneemann’s seminal work Interior Scroll (1975 and 1977, in East Hampton and Telluride, respectively, in which Schneemann read a scroll from her vagina) with new text by Clifford.

Christen Clifford is a performer and writer in New York. Her solo trilogy (17 Guys I F*cked, BabyLove, F*ck Me Like It’s 1945) has been shown at P.S. 122, Galapagos, 45 Bleecker and Joe’s Pub. BabyLove premiered in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the Mesto Zensk Festival of Art and has toured the US and Canada, and was a Critic’s Pick in Time Out New York and New York Magazine. She has collaborated with video artist Alix Pearlstein (The Kitchen, Salon 94, On Stellar Rays) and Fluxus artist Douglas Davis (This American Century II at the Whitney). Her writing has appeared in Nerve, Salon, Identity Theory, Smith Magazine, Time Out New York Kids and the Huffington Post. She co-curates (with Tom Cole) the literary series Experiments and Disorders at Dixon Place. Clifford is the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship and many residencies and is the mother of Felix and Vera. Her website is three years out of date but here it is www.christenclifford.com and you can find her on the old Twitter @cd_clifford. She is currently an interpreter in Tino Seghal’s This Progress at The Guggenheim. This is her first time showing her own work in a gallery.

DIRECTIONS: Flushing Avenue Stop on J-Z Trains -Walk 3 blocks east on Broadway, btw Ellery St. & Park Ave. 840 Broadway - 2nd Floor, door to left of liquor store - ring top buzzer.

This event is part of SITE fest, Arts In Bushwick and The Armory Show/Armory Arts Week

http://www.armoryartsweek.com/armoryarts/index.cfm/publicevents/saturday-march-6-brooklyn-night/

Afterwards let’s have a drink at Beauty Bar a few blocks away! http://beautybar.com/brooklyn/home.php

Performing at How I Learned... series at Happy Ending

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:33:00 +0000

If you haven't been there before, there is no sign. It used to a massage parlour. It looks like this

I am psyched I am doing a story at the How I Learned... series!

It's How I Learned I Might Be Obsessed.

Happy Ending (302 Broome Street, Manhattan) this Wednesday, January 27th. The show’s at 8, doors are at 7, and there’s no charge.

I am trying to get my act together to do some visual components, but I'm not promising anything.

And there's a great line up:
JEFF SIMMERMON
(This American Life, Vice Magazine)
TRACY ROWLAND
(The Liar Show, Speakeasy)
CHRISTEN CLIFFORD
(Salon.com, The Moth, BabyLove)
JOEL DERFNER
(Swish, Gay Haiku)
ERIN BRADLEY
(Nerve.com's "Miss Information")

Oh please Katie Roiphe

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:40:00 +0000

I wrote this a week ago, and sent it out, but no one wanted it and I'm too late for the news cycle, but when I'm mad I can't let it go.

Oh * please* Katie Roiphe

Katie Roiphe’s essay The Naked and the Conflicted in last Sunday’s New York Times about young versus old male American writers and sex made me roll my eyes at first. It was long, kinda smart sounding, and totally annoying. I agreed with part of her point (less swagger and more ambivalence overall) and believe me, I wish there was more writing that explored sex. But it eventually made me so mad even though I know her shtick is to piss people off in the name of the polemic.

Seriously- why only men? White heterosexual men? No one I know still looks to white male heterosexual novelists to give us back a portrait of ourselves and our time, so why does Roiphe? Where is the diversity of our nation? She refers to Chabon and Franzen as “our great male novelists.” Come on.

Even if she insists on being so narrow minded to only look at old-white-satyr-novelists versus young-white-limp-dicked-novelists, couldn’t she pick the right white hetero novelists? Stephen Elliot, Steve Almond and Jonathan Ames should have been considered in any essay about white male writers whose work explores sex, and yes, sex as salvation. I guess they aren’t quite as anointed by the Times and Oprah as Franzen and Foer. (And since I originally wrote this Almond wrote this awesome and overlapping response to Roiphe –Katie Roiphe’s Big Cock Block- on Elliot’s website The Rumpus.) And maybe they aren’t as anointed because the critics at the Times don’t show much love for sexually explicit work, as Almond noted. But the Times and The New Yorker loved John Wray’s novel Lowboy -and so did I- and John Wray’s protagonist believes that if he has sex he can save the world. How’s that for sex “making things happen?”

She doesn’t write about the literary shift away from the novel and towards memoir at all. Which has been, um, kinda big the last ten years or so.

And most importantly to me- what about the women? Alice Munro, Mary Gaitskill, Dorothy Allison, Darcey Steinke, Eileen Myles? I would love to read an essay about what female writers are exploring sexually these days and WHY- and what that says about our culture at large. What about memoirs from Mary Karr, bell hooks, Catherine Millet, Kathryn Harrison and especially Toni Bentley’s The Surrender? (Bentley, through her search for meaning in the pleasures of anal sex, may be Mailer’s true successor.) What about Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick? Or are female writers too whiney and victim-y, hypocritical and weak for her?

Can’t at least some of the heirs to the White Male Novelists be women? Brown? Gay? Memoirists?

The Times did not allow comments, which led me to believe that Ms. Roiphe didn’t want to hear what the rest of us thought. Can’t Katie handle the twitterati and bloggerheads that wanted to take her on?

Novelist Jami Attenberg tweeted: @jamiattenberg re: roiphe nytimes piece. would have been awesome if it were abt women who write about sex really well instead of men who don't.

There was much discussion ranging from the funnily self promotional “Why wasn’t I included!” tweets of Jonathan Ames and Stephen Elliot:

@JonathanAmes iwish somebody would tell k. roiphe of the ny times that i devoted a whole chapter(18)to one bout of vigorous love-making in WAKE UP, SIR!

@S___Elliott Roiphe's argument cant handle me RT @quailty: @annacarollo: How would Roiphe's argument handle someone like Dennis Cooper? Or @S___Elliott?

To the slightly pissed off and ironic:

  @karlsteel apparently Katie Roiphe has a wistful piece in the Times about the rapey literature of yesteryear.

@cthon1c Did Roiphe just call Safran Foer a fag?

And my favorite tweet about the piece, from Colson Whitehead:

@colsonwhitehead Per Roiphe, adding sex scenes to new book. Kinda wish protagonist wasn't a giant, talking ferret

And of course there was a lot of general commentary calling the pink illustrations emasculating and hilarious.

Blodic.us blog did an encapsulated commentary: “Old ones: assholes. New ones: pussies. Only pointed conclusion is that John Updike's still a perv.”

Ayelet Waldman (Chabon’s wife) tweeted a David Foster Wallace quote on Updike from the New York Observer a while back, from the same piece that Roiphe quoted.

And Jessica Crispin wrote on Bookslut: “I just realized it's just like everything else she writes: she states a few obvious things, a few not at all true things, then draws ridiculous conclusions from them. (Like, I don't know -- date rape is a myth, or feminists try to hide the fact that babies are awesome.) But she can write a wicked sentence on occasion, and make you think she's saying something astute with those true things. Then you think for a second and realize she's full of shit.”

I realize there’s a lot of vitriol aimed at Roiphe. I’ve got some myself- here's me being mean: Roiphe writes as if she doesn’t know what that wet thing is between her legs. She writes as if she wistfully looks back on the good old days when Norman Mailer wrote about sex and violence and actually stabbed his wife. And I’m someone- perhaps like Roiphe’s assumptions of Eggers’ and Chabon’s college girlfriends- who originally refused to even read Mailer after a Women’s Studies professor at NYU complained about his misogyny. But when I did finally read An American Dream I was blown away by the writing and the sex and the violence and loved it. I imagine Roiphe saying, “Oh don’t worry Normie, it’s not your fault you stabbed her. Women complain too much and get so mad about such crazy things!” Okay I’m out on a limb here and I know it- but my anger is still fresh from The Morning After – it felt like a personal attack 15 years ago when I was in college- as if I wasn’t a good enough feminist because I had the gall to go and get myself raped.

But honestly, what I find most annoying is Roiphe’s prudery. Her prissiness. Her unwillingness to examine WHY? She doesn’t look at how culture at large has changed since the age of the dinosaur dicks. She doesn’t even mention AIDS/HIV. Or porn. Is her point that back then, most people had to scour Mailer and Updike for the dirty bits? Now you can find it everywhere so maybe it’s less necessary? What about writing that lies in between literature and porn- look to the “Best Sex Writing” anthologies of Susie Bright and Rachel Kramer Bussel. Don’t you think an academic writing about sex and literature would want to consider sex in our culture as a whole?

I feel like the slutty girl in high school saying, "Oooh you're such a prude."

But I think she's intellectually prudish— which is worse.

Time Out New York Kids S-E-X roundtable

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:18:00 +0000

Not sure why I didn't post this earlier- oh yeah, Time Out New York Kids didn't post it right away, and then I was cleaning a crib with poop all over it and play wrestling and building Lego for about a month and I just forgot about it. Til now.

The Parents Roundtable about S-E-X!!!

Time Out New York Kids' historic roundtable discussion is amazing- not just cuz I'm in it- but because they don't have national advertisers and they can take chances the big glossies can't. It was such a pleasure to do this.

weird little update if you are coming to my site for the first time...

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:00:00 +0000

...know that this website is way out of date!

Right now, find me on the Twitter @cd_clifford - I hang out there pretty regularly.

Just in case you want to know: I'm working on a new short performance, shopping an essay about weaning, continuing my collaboration with the awesome cartoonist David Heatley, co-curating a literary series called "Experiments and Disorders" at Dixon Place, working on a long form memoir-ish thing, teaching online, writing a bit for Time Out New York Kids, storytelling a bit at LES Tenement Museum and The Liar, doing some video art stuff with Alix Pearlstein and I'm going to be performing in Tino Seghal's new piece at The Guggenhiem. And I am still basically at home with Vera all the time- getting about one day of child care a week. I feel lucky, but also pretty exhausted and sometimes resentful- it shouldn't be this hard. Friends who live in Berlin brag about their state subsidized child care...and I'm trying to make time for the old self care and my friends. Hopefully that will get easier as Vera and Felix get older.

I'm doing a story on Thursday night! Lower East Side Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:18:00 +0000

Hey I'm doing a story on Thursday night- about the landlord that I had to call the police on because he stole my computer....

xo-C

Thursday November 12th at 6:30pm

LOWER EAST SIDE STORIES
presents
"My New York Apartment"
with
Ophira Eisenberg
Joey Hood
Zoe Muntaner, and
Christen Clifford

curated and hosted by H.R. Britton
with Erik Seims and Michele Carlo

Also - "magic hat" open mike for three-minute stories.
Bring your own three-minute recollection of apartment life in New York.

Tenement Museum
108 Orchard Street at Delancey
F train to Delancey
events@tenement.org
212-982-8420
http://www.tenement.org/vizcenter_events.html

------- F R E E --------

-------------------------------(bios)------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------

Joey Hood has worshipped at the altar of Internet snark-dom since 2002. He is renowned for his dead-ringer resemblance to Bob Saget and his unruly obsession with media icon Oprah Winfrey. Upon graduating from college, he worked as a research assistant for Us Weekly. His byline has appeared in Bitch! Magazine: Feminist Response to Pop
Culture, Nerve.com, National Public Radio, and Rolling Stone Online.

Christen Clifford is a writer and performer in New York. She has performed at Joe's Pub, The Public Theatre, PS 122, HERE, Galapagos and on The Moth mainstage. Her solo show BabyLove ran for three months Off Broadway at 45 Bleecker, and was a Critic's Pick in Time Out and New York magazines. Her writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, Nerve, Salon, and Smith. She is the recipient of a NYFA award and is working on a graphic memoir with artist David Heatley.
http://christenclifford.com/

Zoe Muntaner
If getting in trouble was a lifestyle, this girl definitely is living large. Despite her best effort and intentions it seems to follow or anticipate her steps. From what she says, how she says it to her innate notion of what is fair in a free society "like ours", from Puerto Rico to Los Angeles and now New York to the travels in-between there is always a story in her life. No wonder she has landed in the borough with the most stories of all! In her free time, she sleeps.... alone.... just to stay out of trouble.

OPHIRA EISENBERG http://www.ophiraeisenberg.com/
A MAC (Manhattan Association of Clubs and Cabarets) Award Finalist for Best Female Comic, Ophira Eisenberg has appeared on Comedy Central's Premium Blend and Fresh Faces of Comedy, VH-1's Best Week Ever and All Access, E! Channel, the Oxygen Network, and the Discovery Channel. She also had her own 1⁄2 hour comedy special for CTV’s Comedy Now!
Ophira performs regularly in New York and headlines comedy clubs and colleges across the US. She also hosts and tours with The Moth, a NYC storytelling phenomenon and is featured on their Audience Favorites CD. She is a core performer in the hit shows Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad and The Liar Show.
Ophira was featured in the New York Post’s “The 50 Best Bits That Crack Up Pro Comics”, selected by BackStage as one of “10 Standout Stand Ups Worth Watching” in their Spotlight on Comedy Issue, and hailed as a “Highly Recommended Favorite” by Time Out New York magazine.
Her writing has been featured in the anthology, I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America’s Top Comics alongside that of Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Dennis Miller and Joan Rivers, in Rejected: Tales of the Failed, Dumped, and Canceled, also the upcoming Heeb Magazine’s Love, Sex and Gelfite Fish. She is also a regular contributor for US Weekly's Fashion Police, Gawker.com, Msn.com, and The Comedians Magazine.

Babeland Sexy Moms Series

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:10:00 +0000

I love this Babeland series about parenting and sex- really getting the word out that this is something we all need to be taking about. As one of my fellow panelists said in the Time Out New York Kids issue- "Talking to your kids about sex is teaching them about critical thinking."

See you there.

Sexy Moms Series: Talking With Your Kids About Sex
Wednesday, October 28, 7:00pm, FREE!
Babeland Brooklyn, 462 Bergen Street (between Flatbush and Fifth Avenue)
This month’s "Sexy Moms Series" event will feature sexuality educator, Amy Levine, who will share tips about how to talk with your kids about sexuality-related topics. This discussion is for parents who would like to raise sexually healthy children but aren’t sure where to start, what to say or how to keep conversations open and ongoing. Complimentary refreshments will be served. This event is jointly sponsored by The New Space for Women’s Health, Bump and Park Slope Parents. Complimentary refreshments will be served courtesy of Sip Wines and Joyce Bakery.

Time Out New York Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:22:00 +0000

Hey I'm in Time Out New York Kids this month, as one of the parents in a roundtable discussion about parenting and sexuality called Parental Guidance Suggested. I had a great time, which I guess isn't surprising considering that I love to talk about sex and motherhood. The other participants were smart and funny and I felt like I learned a lot from their experiences. I was super happy to be a part of it and nervous that I would say something really stupid, which I am sure I did but I believe they edited out.

Earlier tonight my partner Ken sat down beside me and read it.

"Did I come off okay?"

"Mmmhmm."

"Did I say anything objectionable?"

"Well anything you say Felix is going to object to when he's about twelve years old."

He's right. I've already started writing Felix letters to be read when he's older, just in case I die in a car crash and he's left with quotes of me in a magazine saying things like, "Felix definitely touches his penis a lot."

I showed Felix the magazine and he was way more interested in the "Kids' Fave iPhone Apps" feature.

I really commend TONYKids for taking this on, and writing about sex positive parenting and parents' real experiences in a way that most parenting magazines with their national advertisers wouldn't allow. Anyway, take a look, it's on the newsstands now (it's not online yet.) And dude I wore that crazy eighties dress that was my sister's because it covered my arms and belly, and clearly I shouldn't bother trying to make my hair look nice for a magazine because it didn't work.

Sick Stories at Issue Project Room

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:53:00 +0000

I'm doing a reading of newish work- revamped text from (What I Know About) My Parents' Sex Life aka Fuck Me Like It's 1945.

Breastfeeding Baby Doll

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:22:00 +0000

Wow a breastfeeding baby doll from Spain.

Vacation Sex

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:19:00 +0000

I have been lucky enough to have been on vacation upstate for weeks on end. We were at a friends in Delhi for two weeks and before moving to our communal summer share compound in Roscoe with The Mommy Cult. Now we are 10 adults and 11 kids (including two babies) sharing 2 old farmhouses, 3 bathrooms, and one small private lake. There have been bonfires and s'mores, skinny dipping and hiking, t-ball on the lawn, and frogs and turtles and lizards and fish, blueberry picking and farmers markets and lots of grilled meat, mountain views and bouquets of wildflowers. It is idyllic, perfect, the kids are spending most of their days outside, swimming, building houses for ants and making up games. I drink good wine every night with some of my closest friends. We even had a kareoke party. But the best part for me has been the sex.

I have been having sex with my husband 4 or 5 times a week all summer long. The baby naps like clockwork, and our son is happy to watch a movie or read for half and hour or play with the other kids here at the "commune". It's mostly quickies, and we rarely have time to truly indulge each other, but it has just been amazing. I asked my partner if he thought we were having more sex because we were getting along better or whether we were getting along better because we were having more sex. He thinks the former, I think the latter. And who really cares, when I'm getting laid almost every day?

Granted it's not perfect- one day we snuck away but couldn't concentrate because who can have sex when all the kids are playing freeze tag just outside the window? Another day our son interrupted us and was about to interrupt us again when I shouted though the door: "My iPhone is on the counter in the kitchen, why don't you play Rolando for awhile?" I could hear him talking to his best friend as he walked away, "Did you hear that!? My mom just gave us iPhone time and we didn't even have to ask!"

But this summer is so sweet because we have had some rough times. Some really rough times. Months and months of no sex. A short respite and then another long dry spell. No connection.

Now I'm somehow transported to the summer we really fell in love, when Ken came to visit me from Australia and we had two perfect weeks of sex and museums and movies and concerts and dancing and sex every day. That was over ten years ago, but my desire for him is the same as it was then. I am so happy and contented, what with all that oxytocin from the breastfeeding and the orgasms.

I'm already dreading the fall: the long commute to my son's school with the baby in tow, Ken working long hours, me desperate to find time to myself to work.

I have no idea how I'm going to keep at least some of this sex happening.

Raise Sex Positive Kids Workshop at Babeland Brooklyn

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:59:00 +0000

Learn how Raise Sex Positive Kids at this awesome workshop.

MotherLover - Babeland Sexy Moms Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Now these are some Sexy Moms. I LOVE this.

Porn for New Moms

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:03:00 +0000

Okay, this isn't real, real porn, but it does speak to me. Porn for New Moms Watch the promo trailer. It would be even better if these guys were naked, saying, "Don't worry, honey, I'll do the dishes and fold the laundry one handed while holding the baby. You just take a nap."

I totally understand the reason this book exists, I laughed, and I LOVE the title but the fantasy of the guy doing all the house work just plays into stereotypical thinking. The sexy guy with the baby. It's true, I think my guy is sexier when I see him care for our kids. It's part of the intimacy of love. But it's not about housework.

Ayelet Waldman just came out with a new book this week, Bad Mother. Porn for New Moms reminds me of Ayelet saying she loved her husband more than her kids because he helped around the house. Okay I'm simplifying things here, but what always made me mad was that she never mentioned her nanny or her housekeeper. Most of us just don't live like that. I'd want to fuck my husband a lot more often if we had someone who did our laundry and dishes every week, let alone every day.

So basically I'm not paying for childcare so I can save for someone to help me clean. So I can have sex more often.

HomeBirth Cartoon on SMITHmag

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:14:00 +0000

My homebirth cartoon is up on SMITHmag. The wonderful David Heatley is the cartoonist, and his wonderful wife Rebecca Gopoian was amazing at helping me edit the text down. They are calling it a Graphic Graphic Memoir. I like that.

This is the backstory of BEFORE the cartoon starts...

In late September 2008 I was 34 weeks pregnant with my second child, in a cab on my way home from a “non stress test” at the hospital. I called one of my two midwives. I was fine, the baby was fine, but Martine was concerned because I was having contractions. Much to the chagrin of some of my friends and family, we were planning a home birth.

My five year old son Felix was born almost six weeks prematurely in St.Vincent’s in 2003. I had been planning to deliver in a freestanding birth center, I was too nervous to have a home birth the first time around, but he came early and I had the Pitocin and the hospital and it was diabolically painful and traumatic, but my son was fine, and I was fine.

In the cab, Martine laid it out for me: modified bedrest for at least 3 weeks. “I really want you to take it easy. You can get out of bed, but just for a walk to the corner. No subway, no swimming, and no sex.”

“I can masturbate though, right?”

“We don’t recommend putting anything into your vagina.” How did she know what I had planned?

“I can still have an orgasm though, right?”

“No, Christen.” Martine could hear the silence on my end. She sighed, “I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t do it. Orgasm releases oxytocin and can induce labor. We want to keep this baby inside for just a few more weeks, okay?”

I knew what orgasm and oxytocin could do to a pregnant woman. I was one of those horny pregnant women.

“You want me to lie in bed for weeks on end and not masturbate?!?! What the hell else am I supposed to do?”

“Read a book Christen,” Martine deadpanned.

And I did know what orgasm could do. I’d read the Ina May Gaskin books about pleasurable natural birth. I’d dreamed of staving off the pain of contractions with my Hitachi. I had planned a hippy happy sexy home birth and I wanted to orgasm all the way through.

She continued, as my belly rode the potholes, “You’ve had a previous premature birth. If we can keep this baby in until 37 weeks, then we can have the birth at home. Even at 36 and ½ weeks. But any earlier than that and you are going to be in the hospital again. You don’t want that, do you?”

No, I didn’t want to be in the hospital again. We were prepared for our home birth. The living room was full of birthing supplies—a birth pool, birth ball, shower curtains, old blankets, stained sheets, rubber gloves, flashlights, thermometers, extra towels, waterproof pads, iodine, Vitamin K drops, a container for the placenta, a scooper for birth and fecal matter, labor tea, baby clothes, diapers. We had the best midwives ever, Martine and Karen from JJB Midwifery.

I wasn’t going to masturbate and fuck this up. I stayed completely celibate for over three weeks. (It was during the lead up to the US presidential election so I watched Jon Stewart on my laptop and obsessively googled this new Sarah Palin person, whom I despised and was sure wasn’t the mother of her new baby.)

And then on October 14, 2008 I was exactly 37 weeks pregnant. Full term. Finally.

That day, my midwives Martine and Karen said I could start being a little more active. “Don’t over do it though,” Karen cautioned, “we still want that baby to be fully cooked.”

So I didn’t overdo it. I got out my Hitachi and I masturbated, once. Okay twice.

Then I took a cab to the pool and swam really gently for 15 minutes and then I took a cab home and met Felix and his babysitter at our local café Espresso 77 and then we went home and there I was, at 5:30 pm, sitting on the couch with Felix, all of the sudden thinking, “Am I wetting my pants?” Why do I always think I’m pissing myself when I’m about to have a baby?

And then magically, it comes to life as an illustrated cartoon!

Martine said to me later, after the birth, when I was all raw and bleeding, "Oh, I hope you guys had sex." And I was like, "Ummm, no! You told me not to!"

Keep looking at the Sexy Moms 2009 blogs!

Moms get %10 Off Sex Toys!- Babeland sexy moms 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:05:00 +0000

Use the code above and get %10 off sex toys at Babeland!

I've been asking some of my friends how they keep their sex lives going and I especially liked these two answers.

1.) Friends: I guess this isn't news to anyone who read that New York Times article about how friends keep us healthy, but some of my mommies say that other moms are their livesavers. "I wouldn't still be married if it weren't for my friends," said my friend E. "They get it: the anger at him for feeding the baby a bottle right before I came home to breastfeed, the boredom of the repetitive nature of mothering, the cyberstalking of ex boyfriends who adored me."

I definitely understand this logic: my sex life improves if I feel better about myself, I feel better about myself if I spend time with my friends, therefore my friends improve my sex life. And I have done the ex boyfriend thing too, which I think is pretty harmless. After Vera was born, I spent an entire nap time watching videos on an ex online. I think I just wanted to be in a world away from children and responsibilities, and anything having to do with them.

2.) Sex on the go: One of my mommies isn't feeling it so much herself, "My libido is nowhere to be found!" While she laments this, she doesn't let it stop her from having an intimate life with her partner. They have a regular date night which always includes sex, since they don't wait 'til they get home. "We have sex in restaurant bathrooms all the time. Quick blow jobs. The bathrooms in the Modern, the restaurant at The Museum of Modern Art, are great. We get dressed up, order drinks (it's expensive!) I leave to use the loo, text him that I'm in the sixth stall on the left and he joins me there."

I definitely need to give that one a try.

Sexy Mom blogging for Babeland

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:54:00 +0000

I am honored that Babeland invited me to be a part of their Sexy Mom Bloggers again this year. Click here for sexy mom blogs. Trouble is, I don't often feel like a sexy mom. My daughter Vera is 6 months old, my son Felix is 5 and half, and two kids is a lot harder than one. I'm lucky if I get to jack off once a week, let alone make the time to actually have sex with my partner.

More Babeland Sexy Moms

Here's what I had to say last year around this time:
http://christenclifford.com/blog/2008_05_01_archive.html

And this still holds:

Being a sex positive family means:

not shying away from explanations of how babies are made
expressing my affection for my partner in front of my child
trying (!) to kiss my partner before my child when I walk in the door
talking about all the different kinds of families we know ("X has two daddies and Y has two mommies and Z has two mommies and a dad")
answering all questions honestly and with facts
expressing my need for privacy
teaching him about privacy (" Does it feel good when you touch your penis? Great! It's supposed to. I know it feels good, but it's best to do that in your room where you can have some privacy.")

The baby's sleeping now, perhaps I'll grab my Hitachi?

Home Birth in New York Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:34:00 +0000

My comments below on the New York Mag article about Home Birth. Cara was not my midwife but many of my friends used her. I was disappointed to see Home Birth written about in this way- there were many other, less controversial home birth midwives that the journalist could have focussed on.

I am an acquaintance of the Lisa that is mentioned- I was appalled that they didn't change her name. It was a tragedy for her family and for the home birth community in New York.

From what my friend's tell me about Cara she is devoted and wonderful- she delivered my friend's twins safely at home. She charges next to nothing for low income women, regularly provides services to the Hasidic community, and most likely doesn't have insurance because it is outrageously expensive.

porn star pregnant sex

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:18:00 +0000

I had to share this link. You know I love anything to do with maternal sexuality.

In the Village Voice Tristan Taormino writes about porn star Nina Hartley's latest video about sex during pregnancy.

Click here to read it

Blogging at Huf Po

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:19:00 +0000

Hi there, I'm blogging at Huffington Post about breastfeeding, pumping, and more! Join me here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christen-clifford/pumping-in-public_b_162713.html

video excerpt from (What I Know About) My Parents' Sex Life

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:46:00 +0000

A short excerpt from the first draft showing of my show (What I Know About) My Parents' Sex Life performed at PS 122 in summer of 2008 as part of terraNOVA's soloNOVA festival. This was a work in progress and not for review.

Also I was pregnant, not fat!

Christen Clifford - "(What I Know About) My Parents' Sex Life" excerpt from Keith Skretch on Vimeo.

Storytelling at The Liar!

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:08:00 +0000

I'll be storytelling at The Liar Show at the Cornelia Street Cafe as part of Andy Christie's awesome Liar Show. See a clip (that I'm in) of a previous show here.

I'm in the New York Times today!

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:28:00 +0000

I'm performing tonight. Especially exciting since I'm usually breastfeeding Vera or commuting to and from Felix's far away school.

Come out to Happy Ending!

from today's New York Times

BOOKS
Other People's Sex Lives

The literary set gets randy tonight. The Drunken! Careening! Writers! series at the KGB Bar hosts an evening of lesbian erotica, with authors including the sex columnist Tristan Taormino. Starting a bit later, Rachel Kramer Bussel's In the Flesh series takes over Happy Ending, with appearances by the magazine editor Neal Boulton, the SNL staffer Rex Sorgatz and the actress and playwright Christen Clifford. The theme is "True Sex Confessions," and audience members will be invited to share theirs. As always, get drunk on free cupcakes first.

Christen in In The Flesh reading series...O, and I had a baby!

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:35:00 +0000

I'm excited to be getting out of the house and performing next week. I'll be a part of True Sex Confessions for Rachel Kramer Bussel's In The Flesh reading series at Happy Ending next Thursday!

I'll be doing a bit of (What I Know About) My Parents' Sex Life , a.k.a Fuck Me Like It's 1945

Read more about 10 reason why you should come here.

Oh and I had a baby on October 14th, Vera Clifford Wark!

See me in The Hysterical Festival, if I don't give birth before then!

noreply@blogger.com (Christen Clifford) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:43:00 +0000

I am scheduled to perform at WORD! part of the

The Hysterical Festival

a new festival curated by the awesome Desiree Burch in response to Christopher Hitchens' "women aren't funny" bullshit in Vanity Fair last year. So I am honored that these women invited me to be part of the big funny. So I will read something (hopefully) funny. That is, if I don't give birth beforehand. This will probably be my last time on stage for awhile, since I'm basically ready to pop.

It's Wednesday night the 15th at 7pm at Ochi's Lounge, click above for info.

Hope to see you there!