Publish and Be Damned

What was the first piece of erotic fiction you ever read?

My first exposure to erotic writing was at boarding school in England. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence was probably the only book in the school library with any smuttiness in it at all. By today’s standards, that really doesn’t rate very high on the hot pepper scale, but thinking back, I guess that’s where I read my first reasonably explicit description of sex.

My next encounter was with De Sade. Although this does get classified as erotica, I have to say that I didn’t find it at all erotic. Socially and politically interesting, but not exactly the sort of thing that makes my legs tremble. Although I still admire his ability to use the word ‘fuck’ as a noun, an adjective, and an adverb. I had a similar reaction to Anne Rice’s ‘Beauty‘ series. I admired the universe she built, but I really didn’t find it very erotic.

It turned out that, for me, it wasn’t the explicitness of a book that made it erotic for me, it was the ability of the writer to express an intensity of desire – not necessarily its satisfaction.

This might explain why I have found Anais Nin still ranks as one of the most erotic writers I’ve ever read. It isn’t her descriptive sex that turns me on; it’s her ability to use prose to bring alive the desire that her characters feel.  And, ironically, The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje ranks just as high.

“Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.”

(from The English Patient)

And some people might say that The English Patient is more of a romance novel. But to me, the main character’s desire is not for romantic love, it’s for a kind of gnawing, feral consummation. Lust. It took me a long time to get through that book – I spent half the time I had it in my hands masturbating.

People often rate lust below love on the scale of worthy emotions. Perhaps I don’t. I find it very easy to love people and extremely hard to lust for them.  Of course, I acknowledge that this is not how most people feel. But then I’m a freak, and my stories reflect that.

How did you start writing it?

When I started writing erotica myself, about nine years ago now, I didn’t want to write stories about sex. I wanted to write about desire, sometimes fulfilled, sometimes confused, and sometimes completely unsatisfied. That’s why I get irked when people call what I write pornography. Pornography promises its readers sexual satisfaction. I don’t think this is erotica’s job. Erotica should make you yearn, not necessarily make you come.

In life, people often don’t get what they desire. Of if they get it, they discover that what they wanted wasn’t really what they needed. Or they get what they lust after and it turns out not to be very good for them.

In Gaijin, for instance, it’s not really clear whether Shindo desires Jennifer, or just want to possess what she represents to him. Not being a terribly analytical fellow, he finds this frustrating:

“He scrambled to his knees and straddled her, his face a portrait rage. “You don’t go until I let you.”

“Then let me, please.”

Hunching over her, he grabbed her chin and sneered into her face. “Why are you so cold?”

Jennifer stared back, both fear and defiance locking her jaw.

He grabbed a handful of snow and threw it in her face. “Why?” he yelled, scooping up an armful of the white powder and dropping it on her. “Why are you so cold?”

He let her chin go and used both hands to pull the surrounding snow over her. She closed her eyes and lay motionless, pinned beneath him, as he piled more and more of it on top of her, screaming the same question over and over again. The cold stole up from beneath her and sank down onto her, the warmth of her body melting the icy bed where she lay.

Then he stopped, enraged and panting, like someone who’d run a marathon. He moved, and she heard his voice close to her ear. “Why are you so cold?” he said, quietly. She felt him push his face into the snow that covered hers, nuzzling through it until he reached her cheek. He pressed his lips to her skin. Cold hands drew up the sides of her body, covering her breasts, squeezing them hard, careless of the still raw piercings.

“Why, gaijin?” he whispered.”

(from Gaijin)

Shindo likes the idea of ‘owning’ something foreign, but when he gets it, he is puzzled by her very foreignness. Certainly, he has sex with her, but he’s not truly comfortable with what he’s gotten.

I think the challenge for erotica is to interrogate erotic desire. Not necessarily satisfy it. Too often I’ve found erotica to be a predictable and formulaic sequence of events that lead to two people having sex and at least one of them orgasming.  I started writing it because I wanted to read something different.

February 28th, 2010 | Remittance Girl | Discussion Topics, First Bite | 3 Comments »