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Melissa Febos Biography

Melissa Febos (born September 28, 1980) is an American writer. She is the author of Whip Smart (St Martin.s Press 2010), a memoir of her work as a professional dominatrix while she was studying at The New School. Her second book, the essay collection, Abandon Me was published by Bloomsbury Publishing on February 28, 2017.

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Melissa Febos Quotes

The other reason I didn't want to fictionalize it is because one of the main points of publishing a memoir in nonfiction was that I wanted to write about what had been a very lonely experience. The books that most saved my life as a kid were the ones that articulated lonely experiences that I had thought were mine alone.

Book, Life, Lonely, Ones, Write, Writing

Me writing the book and the subsequent interactions that we had were actually the cap on that experience. We were still in this weird purgatory about it when I published the book. When I gave them the galleys and what ensued after that, then I understood a lot more about our relationships and what the experience meant to them. I'd never wanted to know what they thought about it at all.

Book, Ensued, Our Relationship, Published, Writing

I tell my students all the time is, for better or worse, no publisher is going to come wrench your story out of your hands before you're ready to let it go. You will have time to take stuff out. You don't have to show it to anybody. That's what I did.

Hands, Let It Go, Stories, Worse, Take, Come

I absolutely think that women told that writing about themselves is somehow not worthy enough for a public audience all the time. I hear it so often from my students and friends. As if it doesn't take rigorous craft, and intellectual acuity to write a slammin' book of any kind. But perhaps, especially, about the body.

Book, Public, Rigorous, Thinking, Told, Writing

I'm always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.

Existed, Girl, Want, Way, Writing, Younger

I think trauma gets a reductive treatment. We tend to think only violence or molestation or total abandonment qualify as "childhood trauma," but there are so many ruptures and disturbances in childhood that imprint themselves on us. Attachment begets trauma, in that broader sense, and so if we've ever been dependent on anyone, I think there is an Imago blueprint in us somewhere.

Thinking, Attachment, Childhood, Imago, Begets, Trauma

I think the addiction stuff, because I was already sort of outed in my family as a sexual person: as a sexually-adventurous and sexually-conflicted person and sexually-driven person. They already knew that about me. They knew that about me when I was eleven. My parents very consciously tried to provide an environment that would protect me from becoming a drug addict.

Thinking, Addiction, Parent, Provide, Family

Even though novels were the love of my life, I started off writing poetry. I think because I had a knack for image and lyricism, even though I didn't really have anything to write about, or I didn't know what to write about. I could just couple words together that pleased me and so poetry seemed sort of natural.

Couple, Image, Seemed, Thinking, Words, Writing

Desperation precludes reflection. That is one of the reasons why smart people can get involved in very obviously unworkable relationships. Like addiction, that deep, Imago attachment is more powerful than logic, and in fact disables logic. So, any explanation or analysis or reflection on such a feeling is already many steps removed from the experience.

Powerful, Smart, Reflection, Fact, Precludes, Obviously

You can turn off the song the way you cannot the actual experience.

Actual, Song, Turns, Way

Music isn't seeking to comment on the experience or transmit some finding about it - it is only seeking to express it. The vicarious experience is much more accessible. We all recognize the sound of that howling, because we all have a similar howling inside of us, however we heed it or hold it or muzzle it or repress it or live in bondage to it.

Bondage, Finding, Howling, Music, Muzzle, Sound

I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.

Exploit, Hug, Make, People, Weakness, Weaknesses

The lovers enter into a story together - "this how we met, this is how we were meant for each other" - and then at some point (in my experience, at least), the story splits, and they no longer share it. Then, you either change the story, or you break up. I've always broken up.

Broken, Enter, Experience, Meant, Stories, Together

I couldn't have articulated this process at the time; I just sort of did it instinctually. But now when I talk about this with my students all the time, it's one of the first things I address in memoir classes - that you have to put it all in because you're writing your way into the ending of your own story. Even if you think you know what the story is, you don't until you write it. If you start leaving things out you could leave out vital organs and not know it.

Class, Leaving, Process, Thinking, Way, Writing

Anyone who makes a life of what they love is a hero to me, and it's important for those people to be visible in every kind of life, every kind of love, every kind of work.

Hero, Love Is, People, Visible

Letting go of the cozy stories you've been carrying around is devastating. But there's more room for new stuff after you do it.

Cozy, Devastating, Letting Go, Room, Stories, Stuff

I more seriously considered publishing it under a pseudonym than I considered publishing it as fiction. I think the decision to write it as nonfiction happened at the very outset of the process, because the overwhelming impetus for writing this book was to understand what the experience meant, and to override my own reductions and rationalizations, whatever story I had that was not true. It didn't sit well with me and I needed to answer that. That's sort of the reason I write everything.

Book, Decision, Outset, Thinking, Understand, Writing

Early in my career as a domme, I both admired and feared becoming one of those career dommes. I saw, in myself, and in some other women in that industry, the way that sex work could eclipse the other parts of your personality, the way that I started to feel as if I wasn't qualified to do anything else. I had always known that I wanted to be a writer, and I stopped writing for a time while I was domming; the experience subsumed my other interests, and it scared me. Now, however, I have nothing but admiration for them.

Becoming One, Dommes, Early, Sex, Writing

The craft work becomes a mediator between me and my secrets, between me and the listener.

Craft, Crafts, Mediators, Secret, Secrets, Work

New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light.

Fire, Miracle, New York, Night

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