A series of unexpected events has led me to write this post. I say ‘unexpected’, but if I’m being honest, and if I allow myself to believe in the magic of synchronicity, it’s really not that surprising.
It started with a new friend telling me they were reading my more-than-a-memoir, Desire Lines. “Oh well,” I told them, “that means you already know everything about me. How about you tell me about you?” And we laughed because this degree of intimate knowledge is unusual in brand-new friendships, but we both chose to embrace it. That book, Desire Lines, opens with a story about Lilith.
Next was an invitation to write a short story for a new erotica website. I’ve been worrying/wondering on and off over the last year or so whether I have any more erotica in me. But this invitation was too good to refuse, and I decided to find out if I could write a new story. Without hesitation, Lilith asked to be included as one of the characters in this story. Of course, I said yes.
Lastly, one of my favourite publishers (Incision Press) put out a call for submissions for their Monsterf*ck anthology. Lilith kept whispering in my ear about ‘beastly pleasures’ until I committed to start writing my monster story. It is a work in progress, but I think it may become the favourite story I’ve ever written.
Which leads me to now, and a burning need to share Lilith’s stories with you.
Starting at the beginning…
As a teenager in the 1980s, I was desperate to learn about alternative subcultures. I knew that the predominant cis-het-normative culture I was surrounded by didn’t fit me (although I’m pretty sure ‘cis-het-normative’ as a term didn’t even exist back then). In Thatcher’s era of Section 28, however, it wasn’t easy to find many other options.
I turned to books and music to help me. My shelves were lined with books from The Women’s Press, Onlywomen Press, and Gay Men’s Press, and my record collection featured many artists from the WRPM label (the cleverly named ‘Women’s Revolutions Per Minute’ collection).
I was a budding feminist and an evolving lesbian, and others’ words (whether written or sung) helped me to explore both of these landscapes with gusto.
And I fell in love with her.
However, by the time I was in my mid-20s, I had forgotten all about her.
***
It was another two decades before we met again.
Now in my mid-40s, and once again exploring my identity and where I fit in, Lilith crashed back into my life.
She was with me throughout the writing of my more-than-a-memoir, Desire Lines.
She was unrelenting in her insistence that I be truthful with her and myself.
She took my face firmly in her hands and gazed deep into my soul, and told me again and again that our stories are our power.
She was my muse, and I was infatuated with her.
***
Just as vivid and passionate as before.
My hands reach for her, and my heart swells in her presence.
Her stories speak to me, and I write them down so others can feel their pleasure in her power, too.
With Lilith in my life, I am bolder and take more risks.
She compels me to write to my edges…
I’m currently writing two new Lilith stories.
Here’s one (of several) that have already been published.
Abbreviated excerpt from Desire Lines by Anna Sansom (The Unbound Press, 2019)
[…]
Lilith’s story
In the beginning, God created ‘Adam’. Adam (or ‘Adamah’, which means [of the] earth) was both masculine and feminine, male and female. As Adam wandered around the Garden of Eden, they (neither he nor she, but all genders in one) saw that all the other creatures existed in pairs. Adam was lonely, and one version of the story says that they went around seeing if any of these other creatures might somehow be a (sexual) fit.
I won’t linger on the bestiality version; I prefer the version where lonely Adam has a talk with God and explains how much they would appreciate a mate and the chance to be part of a pair. God takes on board Adam’s request and, with a little bit of magic, separates Adam into two: one half masculine and the other half feminine. Adam – the man – is now faced with his other half, a woman called Lilith.
Adam and Lilith lived together in the Garden of Eden. They spent their days luxuriating in paradise, and everything they could want was there for them: perfectly ripe fruits, beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and animal friends (who were all much relieved that Adam had stopped making his unwanted advances). Lilith and Adam made love every day, their perfect bodies moving in harmony, their cries of pleasure ringing around the garden.
All was well until Adam began to make inappropriate demands during their lovemaking. Up until then, they had taken equal turns at being on top during sex. Up until then, everything about their relationship had been equal. They were, after all, two halves of one whole. But Adam began to get other ideas. He liked being on top and began to dominate Lilith more and more.
Lilith had not forgotten their equal status and gently but firmly reminded Adam of this. “It’s my turn,” she told him. “You had your turn yesterday and will have it again tomorrow. But today is my turn.”
If only Adam had listened to Lilith, harmony would have been restored in the garden. But he couldn’t get it out of his head that Lilith was ‘his’ and, as such, she should be subservient to him.
Each time Adam attempted to assert his unfounded superiority, Lilith would assert her equality.
They started to argue about everything: what to eat, what to ask God for next, and – always – whose turn it was to be on top.
Eventually, Lilith’s patience ran out, and she issued Adam with an ultimatum: “Treat me with the respect I deserve or I will leave.”
“You can’t leave,” Adam sneered, “there is nowhere else for you to go.”
“We’ll see about that,” Lilith retorted and walked away from Adam and out of the Garden of Eden. Yes, Lilith decided that she would rather be on her own than spend the rest of her life with the only man on earth, especially when that man failed so spectacularly to honour and respect her. The Garden of Eden was paradise, but she chose to leave that, too. How could it be paradise when she was considered less than her male counterpart? Rather than stay and forever be subjugated by her other half, Lilith set off on her own desire line and walked out of the garden.
God, meanwhile, having seen all that was going on but refusing to intervene, watched Lilith walk away. He called out to her, “You can go, but you have to promise me one thing.”
Lilith turned around and looked at him suspiciously, “What is this one thing?”
“If you are no longer to be Adam’s wife – and I can see you’ve made that decision, so don’t worry, I’m not going to try and get you to change your mind – ”
“Too right you won’t,” Lilith muttered under her breath.
“ – you must take on the role of protector of children,” God finished.
“Err, you do know that there are no children,” Lilith replied, stating what, to her, was blindingly obvious. “Adam and I are the only people on earth, and we haven’t had kids, so, you know, being the protector of children isn’t going to keep me that busy. But yeah, whatever, I’ll do it. Can I go now?”
“Yes, off you go,” God sighed. “Just watch out for the demons, it’s teeming with them out there.”
And, with that, Lilith continued on her desire line and walked further and further away from her original home.
God had warned her of the demons but Lilith wasn’t scared. She knew that ‘demon’ was simply a word used to describe any creature that God hadn’t made during his seven-day creativity fest.
She carried on walking until she came to the Red Sea.
***
The story continues with Lilith entering a cave and meeting a demon. They have (consensual) sex, and Lilith bears one hundred, immortal, demon babies every night. She is happy with her new lover, her cave, and her hundreds of babies, but Adam, meanwhile, has begun to feel lonely again and begs God to make Lilith return to him.
God knows there’s no chance she will ever come back, unless he threatens her with something really terrible. He sends three angels to visit her, along with his own ultimatum: “Come back to Adam and the Garden of Eden, or else your demon children will become mortal and one hundred of them will die every day!”
What was Lilith to do? Go back to Adam and his misogynistic ways? Or watch one hundred of her children die each day? “I agreed to be the protector of children in return for my freedom!” Lilith screamed at God. “How can you now threaten me with this?” God did not answer.
Betrayed by her husband and now betrayed by her God, Lilith raged at them both. Her eyes flashed with fire – like those of her demon lovers – and she roared into the night as her children began to die.
This is where the story traditionally ends: Lilith’s once wild and free nature has been turned into something to be feared. As the years go by, the story tells us, she takes her revenge by killing newborn, mortal infants (and is blamed for cot deaths and stillbirths). She seduces men in their sleep and steals their seed. She becomes a demoness and a succubus.
The moral of the story is clear: to be a woman in control of her own destiny and her own desires is to be a woman who must be punished and kept in her place. This is the lesson we are meant to take away. Don’t demand, don’t expect to be treated equally and, above all, know that – if you will insist on walking your own path – there will be dire consequences.
The conclusion of the story introduces one additional character. In the Garden of Eden, the sexually desperate Adam begs God once more: “Please give me another woman!” God can’t split Adam into two again, so this time he takes one of Adam’s ribs and, with another bit of magic, uses it to create a whole new woman: Eve. She is ‘born’ from him, reassuring Adam that she is ‘his’ and won’t be independently-minded like his first wife.
Eve must be compliant, the perfect feminine partner to Adam’s masculine self. She must bear his children and always be happy in the missionary position. In other words, she must not be another Lilith. (We know the story continues with Eve finally walking her own, apple-flavoured, desire line, but this is where we leave Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden, and return to the true version of Lilith’s ongoing story…)
[…]
I have chosen to re-tell Lilith’s story because her story is our story. I don’t believe Lilith turned into a cruel and heartless demoness who murdered children and raped men. I believe that version was told to deter us and keep us in fear, and sought to blame and shame women. I also believe that now is the time to step out of those shadows, tell the stories, and walk the paths that we know are true.
NOTE: Although we now associate the name ‘demon’ with all kinds of terrible things, the original Latin ‘daemon’ (from the ancient Greek ‘daimon’) did not have any of these negative connotations. Daemons were benevolent nature spirits, facilitators of divine inspiration. Neither inherently good nor bad in character, they were simply ‘other’.
It was a surprisingly short distance to the edge of paradise. What had been Lilith’s whole world, a never-ending garden of earthly delights, was now revealed to be only a small speck on an otherwise vast planet. She had imagined only wastelands beyond the edge of the garden: bleak areas where nothing would grow and nothing could live. Even with this vision in her mind, she strode on, knowing that she could not grow if she stayed with Adam in their garden any longer.
In fact, the shift from Eden to out-of-Eden began subtly. As Lilith walked, she observed the grass change colour: still green, but different shades. Then she noticed the sky change too: from the endless blue of the garden, she now experienced awe as darker patches dotted the sky, and the light began to shift and shadow with clouds. Birds circled above her head, unfamiliar ones that were bigger, called louder, and wheeled closer than any she had seen before.
She kept walking and, when she glanced over her shoulder, she could just about make out the border of her native land: way in the distance now, still beautiful but no longer home. She walked steadily onwards – no more looking back, she promised herself.
As the sun dipped lower and lower towards the horizon, Lilith began to look for somewhere to sleep. She had reached a place where the land gave way to an infinite ocean, and, amongst the steep, sea cliffs, she saw the opening of a cave. She scrambled up the rocks and peered inside.
The cave was dry and vast. Lit torches decorated the walls, almost as if someone had been expecting her. Lilith walked inside fearlessly. “Hello,” she called out, her voice echoing slightly in the chamber.
A dark figure stepped out from the shadowy rear of the cave: taller than Adam, broad and muscular across the shoulders, a pair of heavy wings trailing behind on the dusty floor as it approached her. Lilith noticed that the creature’s feet had clawed toes and, as it stepped closer to the light from the torches, Lilith could see sharp teeth and glowing amber eyes.
The creature bowed low in front of her before speaking, “I have watched your travels and I want you to know that you are welcome and safe here. I am a daemon, but please understand that nothing will happen to you here without your consent. I can feel your pain and your hurt. And I can feel your anger. I can also feel your desire. All emotions are welcome here. All that you are is welcome here.”
“Thank you,” Lilith replied, “after all I’ve been through, I do appreciate that, truly. I need to rest: can I sleep here tonight? And may I talk with you awhile? I’ve never met a daemon before; I’ve only ever talked with Adam and God.”
Lilith smiled as the daemon gestured for her to sit on a bed made of straw and soft fabrics. “Are you a man or a woman?” she asked.
Now it was the daemon’s turn to smile. “I am neither and both. You can see I have this,” the daemon gestured to his groin, “I guess you would call this a penis and label me a man. But I have other parts to me too, ones that are more similar to yours.” The daemon looked appreciatively at Lilith’s naked body, and Lilith watched as his appendage swelled and twitched a little.
“We daemons can shapeshift depending on the energy we are feeling and how our partners are feeling, too. You have only ever seen Adam’s body, so you were expecting something masculine. I sensed that as you approached and so took on a form I knew you would easily recognise.”
“Except for your wings,” Lilith interrupted, “I didn’t know that daemons had wings. I thought only birds and angels had them.”
“Has a bird or an angel ever wrapped you in their wings?” the daemon asked.
“No, never.”
“Would you like to know how it feels?”
Lilith looked deep into the daemon’s bright eyes, then at the light dancing off the sheen of his iridescent feathers. “I would like to know how it feels,” she admitted.
The daemon sat on the bed beside her and took hold of one of her hands. She felt the warmth of his touch and leaned her body towards him. Arms embraced her gently yet firmly and she let out a deep sigh. She experienced an immediate wash of sensual pleasure as his feathers stroked lightly at her skin, enveloping her in a cocoon of silken kisses. The contrast between the strong solidity of the daemon’s arms and being enfolded in a cloak of such exquisite softness, both aroused and soothed Lilith. She closed her eyes and sank into the sensations.
“Can we lie down?” she asked. The daemon gently eased her back onto the bed, and they lay, side by side, in this embrace. “Will you stay with me while I sleep?”
“Of course, if that is what you would like.”
“Yes, please, just like this.” Lilith felt herself relax even further and began to drift into slumber.
When she awoke, Lilith was still wrapped in the daemon’s arms, and their bodies were pressed close together. She felt the daemon’s cock firm against her thigh and her own heat emanating from her loins. Her body sang with the variety of new feelings the daemon offered her: a body both solid and otherworldly; caresses from hot skin and cool feathers; unknown potentials waiting to be explored.
“Would you like to make love with me?” the daemon asked lustfully.
Without hesitation, Lilith told him, “Yes, I would, very much.”
The daemon’s cock became even firmer and Lilith shifted a little to bring it nearer to her entrance. The daemon drew back a little, “Tell me what you like.”
Lilith had never been asked this before. Of course, she’d offered suggestions to Adam, but they had been mostly one-word requests: faster, softer, there, oh, yes, there!
“Don’t be shy. Just start with what you’d most like, right now. Feel into your body and speak the words to me.”
Lilith knew exactly what she wanted in that moment. She wanted soft kisses that built in passion. She wanted fingers stroking the sensitive place where her thighs met. She wanted her slickness drawn out of her, her aching need met with fervour, and her emptiness filled. She told the daemon all these things in a breathless whisper, her body beginning to pulse and rock of its own accord.
Each confession was received with an appreciative moan.
When Lilith finished speaking, they were both entranced: the heat from their bodies like a fire lit between them, their lips wet and eyes sparkling. The daemon’s mouth sought out Lilith’s and they had their first taste of each other.
Of all the delicious fruits that Lilith had sampled in her paradise home, none tasted as heavenly as her new lover’s lips and tongue. She drank it in, savouring the sweetness, and swallowing their combined flavour into her being.
Hands met with skin in exploratory caresses, taking in contours and textures, sensitive areas and those that begged for a firmer touch. As the heat built further, their bodies slid over one another, each responding with delight to the playground their new lover offered up.
The daemon gently stroked one finger between Lilith’s thighs and groaned with desire when his finger made contact with her erect clit and juice-soaked lips. Another finger joined the first and danced over and around Lilith, following the trail of her gasps and cries to locate her sweetest spots and most urgent wishes.
As Lilith’s breaths quickened, the daemon unfolded his wings and danced the tips of his feathers over her back and arse.
“Please go inside me,” Lilith urged. With a dextrous move, the daemon shifted his hips to slide into Lilith whilst still stroking and circling her clit.
Lilith called out freely now, her sounds of pleasure rising in pitch and volume and echoing around the cave. They moved together; both suspended in the place of wanting to come but not wanting it to end. They rode the wave of bliss until neither could contain it any longer. Their orgasms tore out of their bodies and throats with such force that they were both left panting and glassy-eyed.
After a moment, once she had got her breath back, Lilith began to giggle. Her giggles became deep belly laughs, and the daemon joined in with her merriment. They rolled back onto the bed together and lay for a while.
“You mentioned shapeshifting.” Lilith ran her fingers over the daemon’s chest. “I think I’d like to find out more about that.”
Did you already know Lilith’s story? What’s your relationship with her?
Because I believe we all contain aspects of Lilith.
Lilith is not about reflecting what other people want her to be, but rather about radiating who she truly is. She is led by her impulses and follows the wild rhythms of her body. She is changeable, dynamic, wild, and free.
When our desires speak louder than our fears, and when we’re ready to walk a more authentic path, Lilith’s courage can help us to take that first step.
In this book, you’ll find stories (truth and fiction) that explore sexuality, gender, kink, intimacy, healing, love, and lust.
You can buy Desire Lines from your favourite bookstore anywhere in the world (ask them to order you a copy if they don’t have it in stock) or you can buy from these online stores:
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