BITS & PIECES: ABIGAIL EKUE

I was at an In The Flesh Reading at Happy Ending--which I still cannot believe is coming to a close--when I heard Abigail Ekue read this short story from her Darker Side of Lust collection. Her voice filled the audience, and the scene --that was sexy and provocative and especially confident --cast a spell on the entire crowd. Everyone looked at her and listened attentively, putting down their drinks even and inching closer.
      Abigail knows how to cast a spell.
      A creative soul after my own heart, she not only writes but reads and performs erotic pieces. Additonally, she is a photographer and dabbles in a lot more than just the erotic. A strong, smart and focused woman, her connection with the human body extends to wanting to heal those bodies with sports medicine as one incarnation.
     We met at a favorite haunt of hers in Lower Manhattan, where sensuous fill bodied women framed the drink menu. The kitchen was closed with an uncertainty as to when it would open (it did and was well worth the wait!). But talking to Abigail made it not matter, sensual and passionate and did I say focused? It is the reason why the audience was so focused on her at Happy Ending. She does the erotica and the sensual well because she does everything she sets her mind to do well. Her drive is contagious and makes you want to get up and do something! Maybe even something erotic her stories are HOT! 
      Read on to get Abigail's bits and pieces...And you can find out even more about this native creative New Yorker here on her website.



Saw an ad on Craigslist -- seeking a dancer type and he wanted real women for nude photography. I figured I would try that. It's about the art or the form of the body. One of the goals of my modeling is to be featured in a gallery show one day. The closest I've been so far is when Aeric Meredith-Goujon had one image of me on display at an event. It was kinda fun, the experience, because I was on the wall and people would look at me and be like you look familiar and then they would realize that that's me on the wall, and they were seeing "a lot" of me.

I do not equate nudity with sex. A friend saw an ad for models for a Babeland book and said, "This is you." I answered the model call, got in the book and was nicknamed the "Wand girl". And it's not a nude photo. On the flip side, I've taken co-ed naked yoga classes -- everyone can see all your stuff and you can see everyone's stuff. It was a great class. It wasn't a sexual environment.

We were not a naked house when I was growing up. We had clothes on in our house. I have my mother's shape, and my father's muscles. My father recently got a copy of my book, my mom encouraged me to write a book.

I need to see the world, I know a lot about the world, but I need to be there to experience it firsthand.

Me, as a photographer, started out with self portraits and photos around NY. Now I want to start shooting with human males. A friend lent me his Canon EOS 10D and I started shooting. My whole learning curve has been portraits and then events. That was all to prepare for my "Emotional Black Male" portrait series. I've envisioned it as a series of very stark black and white portraits. A friend of mine has a very hard face but when he smiles he has dimples and his eyes light up; he has a range of emotion that people don't often see. You don't see a lot of men, in general, in art. I love stills, maybe later I would do videos.

Earlier this year, I read "The Art of Seduction" by Robert Greene -- it's about just that, seduction. Nietzche and Freud were thrown into the mix too. Reading makes me want to read more. If the author has referenced something or if it's something they mentioned in passing in their work, I'll research that. It's a never ending cycle. In the past few months, I've read "The Ethical Slut", "Blue Streak" (about free speech and sexual harassment), "Beauty Junkies" and I've started reading "Ready" (about women embracing a late motherhood), and "The Diary of an Innocent".

I wanted to be a pediatrician then a cardiologist and then I decided to go into sports medicine. It was fun and it was medical and it's sports and it's psychological. It's the whole healing of the body, I love the way the body moves. It takes a certain type of person to be an athlete. I'm drawn to them.

I am a crotch watcher. I look at a person's crotch. Sometimes I see the crotch and then I see the face.

I was just going to take photos of all my sex toys. But my dildo looked like a little man standing there and I decided to focus on him. That's where the name "Man. Toy." came from. I had a gallery interested in the show about 4 days after I started shooting. For the entire summer, I had a dildo in my bag and if I saw something I'd whip him out and take photos. Most people did not even notice I was taking photos with a dildo. Only once, I was in SoHo and this guy saw the dildo and said to his friend, "Yo, did you see that? Did you see that? That's you, dawg!"

I like to be by myself. I like that comfortable silence you can have with someone. Writing, journaling, exercise. I like to do those. I have been journaling since junior high school. I tend to journal before I go to sleep. I have boxes in a hall closet, the drawers in my platform bed full of notebooks.

My intuition helps me out. I focus on things that I know can happen or I think can happen.Someone suggested I send some of my erotica to Mo Beasley and when he read it he wanted me up on the stage. The first time I shared on a big stage was at UrbanErotika, at the Bowery Poetry Club, on my birthday. I recited a poem about BDSM. It was a great night.

I like anything that is character based, emotional, human. I like movies with subtitles. It's a glimpse into another world which I love. I've been obsessed with French cinema recently in preparation for my trip to Paris. I rant a lot on my blog. I do a lot of health and fiction articles. I have done food writing and I would go back into screenplays. I like prose. I write the way I think and the way I talk. My stories aren't always linear or follow a formula.

I cannot bake, I can follow instructions on a box but to bake something from scratch... I'm very impressed by anyone who can bake.

One of my closest friends said that I am the exception to the rule.

Born and raised in New York City, Abigail Ekue is a freelance writer specializing in health fitness and nutrition. She has a B.S. in Sport Sciences and is a NATA certified Athletic Trainer. Her short story collection, The Darker Side of Lust, was published in December 2009. She has worked with UrbanErotika as performer, producer and curator, and been a featured performer at ArtErotica, Freak Nasty, Abiola’s Kiss and Tell and In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series.