Writing Sex

Writing is all about "the story." My hubby sent me a link to the Stranger today that had me reading and re-reading these tiny little passages. Some are clearly more poignant than the others, but more than one had me stopping to think about the story behind them. This is a short post, because I really, really, want you to read this:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/i-saw-you/Content?oid=4447679

We come to understand our own sexuality over time. Over years. Rather than getting into a discussion of gender and preferences around them, I am going to be talking more about the actual acts of sex that fall under the word Kink.

Kink sexual practices go beyond what are considered conventional sexual practices as a means of heightening the intimacy between sexual partners. Some draw a distinction between "kink" and "fetishism", defining the former as enhancing partner intimacy, and the latter as replacing it.[1] Because of its relation to "normal" sexual boundaries, which themselves vary by time and place, the definition of what is and is not kink varies widely as well. Practitioners are sometimes considered to be perverts by "outsiders".

I'll never forget the first time I hit upon a sexual scene in a book that had me utterly confused enough to re-read it about a dozen times. It was a hot lazy summer day, and I was probably eleven or twelve. I remember the bed I was lying on, pushing through a seven-hundred page book in one day. It was CashelMara by Susan Howatch. I can't find it at the moment, or I would quote the passage. But, it was certainly the first time I ever encountered three people in a sexual act together. The female character was married to a gay man who, in order to impregnate her, had to have a male with him. He came into her drunk, began to have sex with her while his male lover mounted him from behind. It took me, a young, inexperienced female, a number of readings to get through that page to just imagine what they were doing. It wasn't until years later that I understood the passage, but it is the first "Oh...wow...there's more to sex than my parents are telling me" moment.

After Cashelmara opened my eyes to the mere fact that more than two people could get naked at the same time, I was all eyes to discover more. As a teen, I became fascinated with sex and disgusted by the concept at the same time. I could read about it ad nauseum. When it came to doing anything, I was much less interested. The reality is, my dad was a physician, and I was inundated with the very real consequences of sex. Fear took hold over any natural inclination to experimentation. I'm of the age that AIDS was brand new in the world right as I was coming of age. The message I got about sex growing up was, "Sex Kills." (Unless you are totally monogamous and are extremely cautious about everything you do.)

I filled my curiosity by reading Harold Robbins. Maybe his stories were a bit fantastical even for fiction, the sex scenes in them were enough for my teenage mind and body. Several of the sexual fantasies that I explore through role play are formed largely on some of the scenes in his novels.

When I was in college, I remember coming home from class early. I would say even unexpectedly, for certainly my dad was more than bit flummoxed when I interrupted his viewing of The Story of O. He hastily grabbed the remote and clicked it off. The "damage" was done, however. I had seen enough to get the gist and was rather embarrassed myself. I didn't think about that incident much until later.

I had just finished an Anne Rice novel when I noticed a book published under a different name originally, but was really Anne Rice. Without even cracking it open, I bought the book. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty both shocked me and turned me on in ways that bothered me. I wasn't particularly comfortable with the way my head would say one thing while my body was responding with a hunger that was just forming. It took me many years to understand that my particular enjoyment came from the observational or giving end and that my natural inclinations tend toward the domination of another, and not the other way around. I didn't want to be Beauty.

When my father died, I finally understood there might be a biological predisposition toward sexual kink. He had about ten library feet of books on or about sex. He had a hidden stash of video tapes that were varied in their content. I can surmise through inspection of their content that he was most likely a closet bi-sexual. And he was one kinky dude. We found a set of sounds, penis enlargers, and other "toys." My mother on the other hand couldn't talk about sex openly even when she got older, so I'm pretty sure my kink comes from my dad's side of the family.

A number of years ago, I took a rather casual poll of my lady friends about how they fantasize. I didn't ask them what their particular fantasies were so much as how they went about it. I was probably in my late twenties, and it was way before I learned the term "kink" or how it applied to me at any rate. I had been with my hubby for probably ten years and had employed fantasy plenty of times particularly during masturbating.

I asked my girlfriends if they fantasized and what they did with their husbands to get to the fantasy. In other words, in real life, we were all married, but in fantasy land we were all thinking about men or women who were not our husbands. Where were their men in the back of their minds? You see, I had always rationalized away my husband so that I could be "free" to have fantasies with other men. After all, being monogamous and married meant that having sex with other men would be sort of contrary to my vows.

Those of us that I talked to who were under thirty had pretty much the same response. "I pretend that he died in a car accident and that it's been a year or so, and I'm now free to start off something new." or, "I pretend that he's in a coma and I just can't help myself. When I'm done, he wakes up from the coma and he's totally understanding of the needs I had while he was asleep. We get back together at the end and all is well." The need to rationalize the ability to 'be with someone else' seemed to play strongest amongst those who were younger.

The older women, say over forty, were more likely to say, "What? When I fantasize, I'm not even me, so the hubby doesn't even come into it." The older they were, the more likely they were to just go all out into fantasy land and have no need to justify their wanton desires.

As I aged, I became much more like my older friends myself. It could be that they influenced me into a more freer frame of mind, but it could be that the need to "be me" in my own fantasies also changed. My earliest fantasies involved my husband being gone for some reason (death, coma, prisoner of war or some-such that he couldn't be with me), and me coming onto the UPS guy or finally dating someone from the gym.

As I got older, I began to fantasize about being someone else entirely in a setting completely unlike my 'real life.' Maybe I'd be an elven princess in a fantastical world. Or, I'd pretend I was an astronaut in space experimenting with weightlessness in fun and interesting ways. Or, I'd be a queen in ancient polyandrous Britain with my male harem serving my needs. At any rate, I moved beyond the "me" in fantasy.

That morphed later as I discovered electronic role-playing. As a writer, I love to put things down into words, and this form of fantasizing has become one that I really, really enjoy. I make up characters that are all very unique and different and write stories with other people who are doing the same thing. When I'm not actually writing scenes for role-play, I do think about them and let them feed my private fantasies.

After our first child was born, there wasn't a huge shift in our sexual practice as a couple. We could feel pretty rest-assured that she would stay in her bedroom most of the night, and we could still fool around on the downstairs sofa or outside on the patio for example. It wasn't until she hit her early teens that we realized the freedom we had was gone for a while. When she started staying up as late as we do, or even later than we do, it became clear that the only way we'd have sex on the dining room table again is to get the kids out of the house.

It's not that we have a particularly comfortable dining room table, but use it as a metaphor for freedom. The ability to take our clothes off where ever we were at the moment and get to business was reduced to nothing. And, as a consequence, a little bit of the excitement of just falling into a hot and heavy lovemaking session at random times and places died with it. We're at the stage where we still kiss--and even in front of the kids--and maybe do a little touching through clothes if we don't think anyone can see us, followed by a quick trip up the stairs and to the bedroom behind a closed and locked door.

I'd normally be very excited by the idea of someone walking in on us in the middle of sex, but that doesn't count when it comes to my kids. I know the oldest knows we have sex, but when she's around I find myself being more quiet than I would like. My urge is to scream loudly during orgasm and let the whole world know I'm a very happy woman, but I've managed to curb that a lot. Sometimes, I feel like I need to bury my head in the pillow and scream to let something out. One night I let loose with a long and loud satisfied moan and realized my daughter was in the hallway close outside the door, hovering to knock to ask a question. I hope she realized I was having a good moment, but I haven't actually brought it up with her.
I imagine the conversation we might have.

"Erm...did you hear anything, unusual last night," I would ask.
She'd look at me and roll her eyes, "You mean the loud noises you were making? Yuck."

"Oh...did it bother you?"

"Mom...eeeuw. I know what you were doing in there. I don't want to talk about it."

So, I figure it's better to let her draw her own conclusions when she sees us kissing at the kitchen sink. She's become way more adept at catching our meaningful glances and has gone so far as to remark on them with a casual, "oh...gross, you guys!" Being demonstrative and open about sex with my kids has always been something I've wanted, but there are limits. So when they are home, it's a show that's behind a locked door and the sound effects are turned way, way down low.

Whenever I pick up a book, I read it on a number of levels. I read for content, plot and general enjoyment of reading, but I always look at things from a writer's perspective. I'll be reading along and come to an abrupt halt. Why did I stop? I'll pick apart a chapter or paragraph, sentence or word. Why did the writer choose to use that word?

How-to books for erotic writers are filled with admonitions about using sex to further a story and not just for the sake of having a sex scene without context. I'm always on the look-out to see how others accomplish the task of writing erotically within the frame of creating a complete and compelling story.

One of my recent reads was Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion. He is better known for his English Patient, but this work is equal to its sequel. However, I came to the following passage and had to stop and ponder it for a while.

They were sitting on the floor leaning into the corner of the room, her mouth on his nipple, her hand moving his cock slowly. An intricate science, his whole body imprisoned there, a ship in a bottle. I'm going to come. Come in my mouth. Moving forward, his fingers pulling back her hair like torn silk, he ejaculated, disappearing into her. She crooked her finger,motioning, and he bent down and put his mouth on hers. He took it, the white character, and they passed it back and forth between them till it no longer existed, till they didn't know who had him like a lost planet somewhere in the body.

In context with the rest of the story this passage makes complete sense. The main character is completely passive in his life and is in love with a woman who can't be his. He sits on the floor, in a corner...his cock is like a ship in a bottle...can there be any more direct way of saying he's feeling trapped?

Not one of the women in my group reading this book thought this passage was sexually stimulating or particularly enticing. It is, however, one of those scenes that shows more about a relationship that is going nowhere and where someone is completely rudderless.

When they "pass it back and forth til it no longer existed" the man's semen is a physical metaphor. The entire encounter can be used to set the general timbre of their relationship. They are together only tangentially yet they are one.

The other sex in the novel is alluded to in more general terms. They clearly are having more traditional intercourse, but the scene in the corner is the only one that gives the reader a full understanding to the depth and impossibility of their relationship.

I'm calling the site Writing Sex, but I won't actually be putting much sexually explicit writing on here. I'm going to be blogging more about the process of writing sex for erotica and how sex influences my life. It's everywhere and, like the proverbial pink elephant, it's not talked about much even though it's taking up a lot of head space. It's one of those verboten subjects that create tension and uncomfortable feelings along with raised eyebrows. All the while, we are OBSESSED about sex.