SANDY DAYS, SALTY NIGHTS
Writing: The ultimate turn-on
ArtisHENDERSON sandydays@florida-weekly.com

Ranking somewhere between electricians and accountants in the spectrum of titillating professions, writers rarely top the list of sexiest celebrities. Paleskinned and four-eyed - the products of a lifetime spent brooding over manuscripts - they are considered a shy, dowdy lot.

Thank God for the exceptions.

At the Sanibel Island Writers Conference, where writers were like rock stars, I had the chance to see some of these super sexy, incredibly smart authors up close. I won't lie: looks definitely played a part. But, they had something more, a discernable glow born of striking intellect and flagrant sexuality, like the way they referenced Joan Didion and used the f-word in the same sentence. It was lurid and inappropriate and intelligent all at once.

When Steve Almond, author of bestselling Candyfreak, first said "syntax is sexy" during his nonfiction writing workshop, I not only believed him, I agreed with every fluttering beat of my heart. He peppered his speech with words like "elegiac" and "conduit," effectively switching between SAT vocabulary and a story on his first pubescent rendezvous with the jets of the family hot tub. He was unashamedly, unabashedly literate and frank about his sexuality all at once.

COURTESY PHOTO Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak.

William Giraldi, another author and presenter, shared Almond's fierce intelligence, but with a dark, melancholy streak that the women found irresistible. Alternately abrasive and embracive, his daily memoir writing workshop was packed with increasing numbers of flushed, bosom-heaving women.

The ultimate Casanova of the conference was keynote speaker and Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Olen Butler. Every woman loves an alpha male, and in a sea of authors, his Pulitzer clearly put him on top.

Resting outside before the evening's keynote reading, I felt my heart speed up when Butler himself took a seat on the bench next to mine. I clammily clutched the pages of the book in my hands, stealing glances out of the corner of my eye. He turned to me and smiled. My heart seized in my chest. Say something! my brain screamed as my palms sweated and adrenaline pumped through my veins.

"Are--" my throat closed and my words dissolved in a whisper. I tried again.

"Are you nervous?"

He smiled. "About the reading? Oh, no. I'm used to this by now."

He joined me on my bench and we chatted about his work, the weather on Sanibel, and our shared experiences of Vietnam. He: calm and genuine, me: shaky and starstruck.

When it was time to head in for his reading, I wished him good luck, knowing he wouldn't need it. His selections were in parts hilarious, in parts heartbreaking, and I could feel the collective hush of the crowd deepen with each new piece.

His readings grew increasingly passionate and the women in the audience leaned forward, his Pulitzer working like a literary aphrodisiac. When he came to the last of his pieces, from a collection called "Intercourse," the mostly female audience erupted in a thunder of applause, cheering his poetic writing, his dramatic presentation, and his thoroughly erotic intellect.

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