I know I said I’d be back on the 8th, but I JUST MISSED YOU GUYS OKAY!?

So, a bit of backstory for you kinky kittens. I got a chance to meet Cooper S. Beckett (Yes, the one from Life on the Swingset) at CatalystCon West 2014. I was lucky enough to be introduced courtesy of my AMAZING roommates, and so I was in complete and utter shock at the fact that not only did I get to meet the infamous Swingset crew, but I actually got to hang out with them, like a lot. Like these people decided that I was going to be a friend (or at least allow me to tag along). I was so thrilled.

Fast forward to a couple weeks/months ago when I heard Cooper was releasing a book. Naturally, I was really into the idea of reviewing it and interviewing him for my blog, if only because he’s hilarious. The book review comes up this Thursday, and you can get your copy of My Life on the Swingset by clicking here.

 

The Frisky Fairy: How do you think you’ve evolved since starting this journey of non-monogamy?

Cooper: I’d say I’m almost a completely different person than I was before non-monogamy. It’s as though every part of me was taken out, upgraded, and replaced. I’m so much more open in all aspects of my life than I was back then. When you shed the shackles of monogamy it’s such a fundamental shift in thinking that it makes every other tradition that much easier to shed. I’m not there yet, but I’m well on my way to actually finding Zen, and being okay with my life and my future.
The Frisky Fairy: What was the easiest, and the hardest, thing about writing this book?
Cooper: Well, since most of it came right from the website I thought, eh, this’ll be a piece of cake. Turns out what I thought would be the easiest part was actually the most difficult. It was hard not to go through and change my previous opinions, to significantly edit essays, etc. I really had to resist. The hardest thing is that there’s a lot of my evolution in here. I had to take a good look at my “warts and all” opinions and evolution, as well as watch in horror as Past-Cooper had to go through a lot of that again. I so wanted to help him!
The Frisky Fairy: What inspires you?
Cooper: I’m inspired by silliness, by play. I think the reason so much of the world is so dark and mean is because people are trained not to play, be silly, have fun. I try to remember when I get stressed or angry to do something light. That and there are so many people doing amazing work in the field of adult sex education. I think one of the biggest problems our society faces is the repression of sex, and the defense against that is education. Because education teaches you how to avoid the pitfalls that sex comes with, but also teaches you how to enjoy it thoroughly. And if people were getting fucked better, the’d likely be less angry.
The Frisky Fairy: Do you have any amusing stories about the creation of this book?
Cooper: We’ve been talking about doing books at Swingset for three years now and nothing has quite come together. With this book it was sort of accidental. I’d just started using Scrivener for my writing, and I thought I should collect all of the essays I’d written for Swingset into one place. When I did, I put them all in and saw I’d written over 130K words. At that point I went on FB and twitter and announced My Life on the Swingset would be coming out. I do that, announce things before I have a plan. Swingset actually came about similarly. We started recording and doing the podcast before we’d given any thought to the difficulty. I think that way you can’t talk yourself out of doing it. So MyLotss became a thing that people were asking about, and every time I stumbled working on it, I’d put it back out into the world, finally announcing a release date just so I’d finish the fucking thing.
The Frisky Fairy: You mention your writing crutches, which is your favorite to use?
Cooper: Without a doubt the thing I most enjoy is using nested parenthetical and brackets. It’s one of the silliest things I do in my writing, but the one I love reading most. I think I ought to thank Stephen King for that, because he was the first writer I saw throwing random phrases within parenthetical into a paragraph. A secret: The only reason I KNOW the word myriad is because of the movie Heathers.
The Frisky Fairy: What is your favorite quote about sex, love, or non-monogamy?
Cooper: Since the wonders of sexuality are such a well kept secret in our world, this quote always made me so very happy:
“My first time I jacked off, I thought I’d invented it. I looked down at my sloppy handful of junk and thought, This is going to make me rich.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
The Frisky Fairy: Where can you see yourself in 5 years time?
Cooper: Hopefully finally getting an email to Dan Savage (we’ve been playing email tag [by that I mean he tweeted to me to email him, but now we can’t reach him {if you’re reading this, Dan, email ME!} because he must have some great email filters in place]). Beyond that…general manager of Shortbus? I hope to be out to my parents and more visible in my community. And celebrating the 10th anniversary of Life on the Swingset.
The Frisky Fairy: What advice would you give to your younger self, the one who was just starting in this journey?
Cooper: It’s going to get rough, but the most important people in your life, the best people you’ve ever met, come as a result of this first step. So hold on, young Cooper, you’re gonna have a prostate orgasm. It’s true! I’d also tell him not to hold on so tight to control. Control is just an illusion, and a death grip on situations rarely produces a favorable outcome.
The Frisky Fairy: What advice would you give to aspiring non-monogamous folks?
Cooper: You’re going to fuck up. It’s unavoidable. We all do. Sometimes it’s really big too. So just go in knowing that. Know that your partner will fuck up. Do some pre-forgiving. The other most important and valuable thing you can do is divorce the concept of “sex” from penis in vagina and penis in anus. Allow sex to be everything from the first tentative rubbings of erogenous zones outside clothes to full on anal fisting. It’s all sex, and it’s all awesome.
The Frisky Fairy: Beyond the book, what’s new for Cooper (and the Swingset crew) in 2015?
Cooper: We have two other books on deck, and as I mentioned above, I’m going to attempt to WILL them into being: Life Less Monogamous is an anthology of essays from prominent educators all over the non-monogamy spectrum about this thing we do, and Sex With Benefits: Progressive Swinging is when we finally put word to page about the way we swing.  Beyond that, I have a feeling the Swingset.FM podcast network is going to quickly grow large enough to consume the rest of the site. And I’m okay with that.

A HUGE thank you to Cooper for the interview, and for giving me the freedom to use nested parentheticals/brackets in all of my writing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go re-read the part of My Life on the Swingset that made me whimper in public, and hope that Cooper isn’t so busy at CatalystCon East that I can’t buy him a drink.

 

Make sure you follow Cooper on Facebook and Twitter

Also catch up with Cooper and the whole Swingset crew on their website, and their blog!

Finally, for the love of all that is holy, click here and buy your copy of the book as soon as you can, because it’s amazing. Check in on Thursday, and you’ll see why!!!

Until Next Time!
-The Frisky Fairy

 

 

P.S.

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