Sherilyn Connelly
> Essays, Rarities and B-sides| Title / Size / Description | Year | |
| The Book of Hours Excerpt #3: When Doves Cry (105KB) | ||
| Commissioned for Jan van Rijn's The Book of Hours.
Much higher quality versions of van Rijn's art (mostly nude illustrations) can be found on his website. As of this writing, I have no idea when The Book of Hours will be completed and published. | 2010 | |
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| The Book of Hours Excerpt #2: Rope Coma (101KB) | ||
| Commissioned for Jan van Rijn's The Book of Hours.
Much higher quality versions of van Rijn's art (mostly nude illustrations) can be found on his website. As of this writing, I have no idea when The Book of Hours will be completed and published. | 2010 | |
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| The Book of Hours Excerpt #1: Devi (88KB) | ||
| Commissioned for Jan van Rijn's The Book of Hours.
Much higher quality versions of van Rijn's art (mostly nude illustrations) can be found on his website. As of this writing, I have no idea when The Book of Hours will be completed and published. | 2010 | |
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| Bottomfeeder: The Ungangbang (Perverts Put Out! Mix) (126KB) | ||
| For Simon Sheppard's show "Perverts Put Out!", 3/13/10, excerpted from the memoir Bottomfeeder.
One of the major sequences to survive the rather brutal editing process, it touches on most of the book's themes. And, squish! | 2010 | |
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| Finding Sister Midnight (195KB) | ||
| For an anthology about the non-paying partners of sex workers.
The original version was written in 2002 and was much shorter, mostly because 2003 and 2004 hadn't happened yet. | 2009 | |
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| Bottomfeeder: The Last Dog and Pony Show (AIRspace Mix) (137KB) | ||
| For Joe Landini's show "The Garage All-Stars Part II," 6/10/09, as part of the National Queer Arts Festival. Excerpted from the recently finished memoir Bottomfeeder.
Love, loss, regret, redemption and kitty ears. | 2009 | |
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| Bottomfeeder: Intersections and Interventions (AIRspace Remix) (136KB) | ||
| For Joe Landini's show "AIRspace," 3/7/09, 3/14/09 and 3/21/09, excerpted from the eternally work-in-progress memoir (formerly titled Exchange and Descent).
One long night in the Tenderloin and beyond. | 2009 | |
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| The Last Snowstorm of the Year (111KB) | ||
| For Thomas Roche's show "Christmas Sucks" 12/19/08.
A meltdown in a New Orleans snowstorm, Christmas 2004. | 2008 | |
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| Will the Night (90KB) | ||
| Written for Sadie Lune's Vampire Birthday Party, 10/25/08.
The very good start to a relationship which ended very badly, as they often will. | 2008 | |
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| Garden Party (91KB) | ||
| Written for Meliza Bañales' show "Coming Out...Again," 6/25/08.
Perhaps more than anything else I've written, I had no idea how this would turn out when I started, and indeed it went through dozens of drafts and a few thousand deleted words before becoming what it is. And I rather like what it is. | 2008 | |
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| Bottomfeeder: Malediction and Pee Play (Perverts Put Out) (113KB) | ||
| For Gina DeVries' show "The Best of SFinX," 6/7/08, and revampted for Simon Sheppard's show "Perverts Put Out," 1/910. Excerpted from the memoir Bottomfeeder.
This is a piece I'd been wanting to read in front of an audience for quite some time. | 2008 | |
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| Exchange and Descent: Feasting on Scraps (My Sucky Valentine Mix) (94KB) | ||
| For Thomas Roche's show "My Sucky Valentine," 2/14/08, excerpted from a work-in-progress memoir.
Thomas requested "a 10-minute piece on love, sex, weirdness and/or misery." Can do! | 2008 | |
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| The Slimming Effect (135KB) | ||
| Published in Michelle Tea's anthology It's So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style.
1999. | 2007 | |
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| vestri pen0r quod vos (93KB) | ||
| Written for Julia Serano's spoken word show "The 'Penis' Issue," 6/13/07.
I have way too much fun with fake latin, italics and replacing the letter O with zeroes. | 2007 | |
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| Outlet (67KB) | ||
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Published in Carol Queen's anthology More Five Minute Erotica.
One of my better attempts at smut. Based on a true story, but don't tell anyone. | 2007 | |
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| Exchange and Descent: Encroachment Under the Sea (Writers With Drinks Mix) (95KB) | ||
| For Charlie Anders' series "Writers With Drinks," 8/11/07, excerpted from a work-in-progress memoir.
There's beauty in the darker corners of human behavior if you aren't presuming you'll find light. | 2007 | |
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| Crashing into Coma (70KB) | ||
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Written for Katrina James' show "Cake and Debauchery," 10/7/06.
Followup to Coma White. Ignoring for the moment that the name is stolen from a Marilyn Manson song, Coma's my character and I like her a lot, so I brought her back in the first person. Vashti is, of course, from Impurim. Somehow. | 2006 | |
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| Working for the Weakened (140KB) | ||
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Written for my show "Working for the Weakened," 6/12/06.
He doesn't know the show happened or that the story was written, but I still feel like I got a little revenge on Him anyway. | 2006 | |
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| Transuming Conformity (74KB) | ||
| Written for Michelle Tea's show "Transforming Communities II," 6/26/06.
An experiment in second-person subcultural heresy. | 2006 | |
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| The Lightning of Early May (71KB) | ||
| The story of a First.
This defaulted to poetry—or "poetry," anyway—because I couldn't quite wrangle my notes into prose. | 2006 | |
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| The Twilight Zone: The Midnight Sun (138KB) | ||
| My stage adaptation of an episode of The Twilight Zone for The Dark Room, performed on May 5/18-5/20/06.
I also directed it. I haven't been in a huge rush to direct anything since. | 2006 | |
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| Tchotchke (103KB) | ||
| A very bad first date.
It's pronounced "chotch-key," by the way. | 2006 | |
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| Burn Hollywood Burn (68KB) | ||
| Written for the TGSF Cotillion, 1/21/06. The theme that year was "Hooray for Hollywood." I had some issues with it.
Designed to be bellowed angrily, this is an homage to my pal The Reverend Steven Johnson Leyba. | 2006 | |
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| Your Area and You (72KB) | ||
| Written for the UC Berkeley V-Day production of The Vagina Monologues, 2/10/05 - 2/14/05.
The first piece I wrote expressly to be memorized. And to be performed in front of several hundred people, no less. | 2005 | |
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| Tonight Is What It Means to be Dumb (71KB) | ||
| Written for the TGSF Cotillion, 1/15/05. The theme was "Back to the 80s," so I dressed as Madonna from the "Lucky Star" video.
I was never happy with how this piece turned out, but cannibalized parts of it to use in other, better essays. The title is an obscure reference to the climactic song from Streets of Fire, but in an act of cosmic Fruedian irony, the name was listed in the program as "Tonight is the Night I Feel Dumb." Which was not entirely inappropriate, either. | 2005 | |
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| Shoot the Messenger (119KB) | ||
| Written for a seemingly abandoned anthology on the queer performance scene.
An elegy for my dead cabaret show Wicked Messenger. | 2005 | |
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| Fundamentally Loathsome Unused Intros (72KB) | ||
| Excerpts from an early draft of an essay entitled "Fundamentally Loathsome."
| 2005 | |
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| Philistine (74KB) | ||
| Goliath's story, in his own words.
One of the last pieces I did for my writing group before I was...um...well, "kicked out" is such an ugly phrase. "Strongly encouraged to withdraw," perhaps. Anyway, this was the third in what became a quadrilogy of rewritten bible stories. This was also an attempt to do a first-person story which wasn't in my voice. It feels like an outline, and I hope to revisit and expand this someday. | 2005 | |
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| NAAFA Essay (110KB) | ||
| Written for the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance convention on 8/13/05.
Marilyn Wann asked to write about being an artist and trans activist. I was never quite satisfied with how this turned out, and later cannibalized parts for other essays. | 2005 | |
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| Impurim (135KB) | ||
| Written for a Purim Celebration on 3/26/05.
I had never even heard of Purim when I was asked to write and perform a revisionist version of The Magillah, the Book of Esther from the Bible. Right up my alley, to be sure. It's my longest piece of fiction. | 2005 | |
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| Darwin and Caprica: Endings (84KB) | ||
| From my writing group. I don't recall for certain, but I think the prompt was "endings."
A chapter of a longer story which I hope to tackle someday, and partially inspired by the boss from Working for the Weakened. | 2005 | |
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| Coma White (98KB) | ||
| Begun a year earlier and abandoned due to outside pressure, this was eventually completed for "The Bad Date Show" on 6/3/05.
The most controversial thing I've ever written, and partially responsible for my ouster from the writing group. Coma White returned in Crashing into Coma. | 2005 | |
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| ut vereor est vis matris (78KB) | ||
| From my writing group. I believe the prompt was "violence."
I don't remember what the title means, but damn, doesn't Latin always look classy? | 2004 | |
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| Plasma and Poultry (83KB) | ||
| Published in Morbid Curiosity #10.
Blood, and the drinking thereof. | 2004 | |
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| Tour (181KB) | ||
| Tales from my 2004 tour of Sothern California with Lynn Breedlove.
Mostly stitched together from my diary. Contains controversial elements which shouldn't be read. So don't. Move along, citizen. Nothing to see here. | 2004 | |
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| Three Questions from the Spooge Zone (85KB) | ||
| A toss-off from my writing group. I don't remember the prompt.
One of my final "things that happened on drugs" stories. Thankfully. | 2004 | |
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| Two-Sixteen-Ought-Four (91KB) | ||
| A non-linear look at getting married. Originally written for the show "I DO, I DON'T: A Queer-Centric Solution to an American Institution" on 6/4/04, and subsequently published in the similarly named and themed but otherwise unrelated I Do/I Don't: Queers on Marriage by Suspect Thoughts Press.
A milestone: my first piece in an honest-to-goodness book, with an ISBN number and everything! (0-9746388-7-0, to be precise.) | 2004 | |
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| The True Name of the Beast, Part 2 (68KB) | ||
| From my third (and possibly final) chapbook unpronounceable symbol.
Nothing's changed. Even now, nobody gets my name right. Second of two parts. | 2004 | |
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| The True Name of the Beast, Part 1 (67KB) | ||
| From my third (and possibly final) chapbook unpronounceable symbol.
Nothing's changed. Even now, nobody gets my name right. First of two parts. | 2004 | |
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| Sherilyn is… (47KB) | ||
| A goofy bit of Googlism-inspired found poetry. A piffle.
But it's an entertaining piffle, and fun to read aloud. Sometimes, that's enough. | 2004 | |
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| HQ 77 (148KB) | ||
| A primer for trannies, who are just coming out the closet, this was my original submission to Good Advice for Trendy Young People.
Unfortunately, it was over four times longer than the maximum word count for submissions, and I was too in love with it to do the editing myself. I'm not thrilled with the final product in the book, but I certainly learned my lesson, and have nobody to blame but myself. Even in this form it feels like what it is—an outline—and someday I might expand this into its own book. Or not. | 2004 | |
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| The Face of the Field (67KB) | ||
| From my writing group. As usual, the prompt escapes me.
My second Bible rewrite, this time about Jezebel. | 2004 | |
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| Hero Worship (81KB) | ||
| From my writing group. I don't recall the prompt, though it may well have been "hero worship."
This is mostly just notes and brainstorming, but I like it. It reminds me of how much I enjoy writing dialogue. | 2004 | |
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| Fragments from the J.C. Scrolls (64KB) | ||
| From my writing group. The prompt was "religious literature." I also wanted a new piece for an erotica show called Perverts Put Out! on 1/10/04, so I combined the two.
Designed as a performance piece, it just kind sits on there on paper, but it's much fun to read aloud. And I did, many times. | 2004 | |
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| Ammonia Sheets (67KB) | ||
| All about being a bedwetter until my teens.
As through writing about masturbating until I bled in "The Bloody Organ" wasn't enough, I challenged myself to write about the most classically embarrassing thing I could think of. This probably still doesn't come close. | 2004 | |
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| Act II: Walpurgisnacht (74KB) | ||
| A true story of an unrequited crush.
This got me into trouble several years later via a logical fallacy, whichever one means "you did something before, so you'll do it again." That's a fallacy, right? | 2003 | |
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| Yours and Hers (43KB) | ||
| Nothing in particular about nobody in particular.
The first piece for my writing group. The prompt was "prose poetry." I'd never heard the term before. | 2003 | |
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| Spread (63KB) | ||
| From my second chapbook, Sublimation.
On modeling nude for a Satanic priest. | 2003 | |
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| The Bloody Organ (74KB) | ||
| From my second chapbook, Sublimation, and later published in Morbid Curiosity #9.
A squicky tale of teenaged autogynephilia. | 2003 | |
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| Sloth and Loathing on the 71 Line (74KB) | ||
| From my first chapbook, Substance 1994 - 2002.
Mmm. Acid. | 2002 | |
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| This is Not Going to be a Bad Trip (72KB) | ||
| From my first chapbook, Substance 1994 - 2002.
Eh. Pot brownies. | 2002 | |
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| When a Stranger Calls (63KB) | ||
| From my first chapbook, Substance 1994 - 2002.
Eh. Pot. | 2002 | |
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| The New Prohibition (66KB) | ||
| From my first chapbook, Substance 1994 - 2002.
Ick. Mudslides. | 2002 | |
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| Out, Part 3: Grinding to a Halt (81KB) | ||
| Originally sent as a three-part email to a bunch of people who probably don't remember me now.
My first time dressed as female in public, before coming out as transsexual. Third of three parts. | 1997 | |
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| Out, Part 2: The Slow Stuff Between the Exposition and the Climax (85KB) | ||
| Originally sent as a three-part email to a bunch of people who probably don't remember me now.
My first time dressed as female in public, before coming out as transsexual. Second of three parts. | 1997 | |
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| Out, Part 1: The Beginning (76KB) | ||
| Originally sent as a three-part email to a bunch of people who probably don't remember me now.
My first time dressed as female in public, before coming out as transsexual. First of three parts. | 1997 | |
