Let’s Get Real - #censorship #hormones #teensex

 Image by lisajules from Pixabay

A while ago, I received the welcome news that a short story of mine had been provisionally accepted into an anthology. The editor wrote:

“I love your story, but it will need a little bit of amending: we cannot have any mention of anyone under the age of eighteen having sexual thoughts or masturbating. (I know this is absolutely silly but we are not in a position to risk it.)”

Let me make it clear that this story (which would probably be categorized as literary erotica) does not feature underage sex. The main character has an unusual and rather dangerous fetish, which first appeared after an experience in his mid-teens. The story includes a flashback in which the protagonist describes those early events and how they shaped his current, adult sexuality. Like most teens, his reaction to arousal was to masturbate.

I didn’t fight with this editor, first of all because I really wanted to be part of the anthology and secondly because she recognized the ridiculous nature of the prohibition. However, this state of affairs still makes me fume. I mean, let’s get real. Nobody masturbates more often than teenage boys! And sexual thoughts? As I recall my high school years, it was pretty difficult to focus on anything else!

It’s hard for me to understand the logic behind this rule. We’re not talking about pedophilia here. We’re discussing private sexual stimulation. Who is being hurt? Why should this be a forbidden topic?

The first time I remember masturbating, I was four. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing, but I knew it felt good. I had erotic fantasies in grade school (about being kidnapped at the beach by a classmate who wanted to pull off my bathing suit). It’s an accepted scientific fact that children have sexual urges, and that in the years right after puberty, hormones run rampant. What purpose does it serve to pretend otherwise?

Does anyone still cling to the myth of childhood purity and innocence?

In fact, fetishes often have their roots in childhood experiences. Changing my story probably won’t do great violence to its main points, but it does reduce the authenticity of the tale.

People write, and read, erotica for many reasons. As for me, I’m simply fascinated by sex. My personal motivation in writing is to explore the way sexuality complicates, illumines and transforms human existence. I want to realistically portray the experience of desire and to show its varied impacts on the lives of my characters. If I can arouse my readers in the process, I’m pleased, but that’s a side effect rather than my primary goal.

It become quite difficult to achieve this goal when I’m forced to deny power and importance of teenage sex. Confusing, scary, wondrous, indescribably intense—our earliest encounters with sex strongly influence our adult fantasies and needs.

Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar, or out of touch with reality.

It’s Complicated - #Sexuality #Awakening #Poem

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

During my third year in graduate school, I blossomed sexually. Or to put it more crassly, I started to sleep around. The shy, studious mouse I’d been up to that point burst from her chrysalis (inflicting severe violence on a metaphor) to become a gorgeous butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.

I realize now that hormones contributed to this explosion of sexuality. I was in my mid-twenties. My body was trying like crazy to procreate. (Fortunately, modern contraceptive technology thwarted this biological imperative.) At the time, though, the experience felt like magic, a kind of liberation from my past self-image as nerdy, socially awkward and unappealing. All at once, it seemed, I was desirable. Potential lovers were everywhere. I could indulge myself. If I wanted someone, I could act on that desire. If someone wanted me, I could say yes, without hesitation or guilt.

Was I over-sexed? I reject the judgmental tone of that question. Looking back at those years, I feel a bit embarrassed, realizing how slutty I must have seemed to anyone observing me, but indulgent. I was learning, growing, changing—and having a marvelous time, for the most part. Isn’t that what youth is for?

I wasn’t just scratching a physical itch. This wasn’t primarily about getting off. My lovers weren’t faceless, interchangeable bodies. I wrote page after page in my journal after each encounter, poem after poem.

Here’s one of them, a particularly detailed explication of one day in my sex-drenched life. It’s not a very good poem at all—starts out well, but degenerates into adolescent hyperbole by the end—but I’m offering it as a historical document, not as a literary effort.

six-sixteen-seventy-nine

by Lisabet Sarai

1. greg
   
   and when you,
   firm, assured, proud,
   began your vows
   a summer cloud
   misted my view
   and I couldn't help
   recalling you
   between my legs.
       but the spicy tears
    and the hungering lump
    in my throat passed
    and I let you go
    (will you ever know?)
   I came to your wedding
   dressed like a bride
   in starched summer white
   and with pity and pride
   took both your hands,
   wished you the best,
   felt myself blest
   by your chaste kiss.

2. matt
  
   curiosity
   and champagne...
   excuses. 
   I chose
   to follow my hormones
   to your motel
   knowing full well
   your precocious mind. 
    another adventure
 in technicolor,
 in sun-burnished flesh,
 in salty moans,
  hunger, humor...
 stranger,
 strange but sweet
 it was
 if not for this 
 icy torrent of voices
 (which one my own?)
 drowning the moment.

   in your nineteen years
   have you known regret?
   and why should I wonder?

3. bob

   yes, yes!
   so totally right for the time,
   my fantasy 
   flourishing, blooming,
   a porch-full of roses,
   this june rejoicing
   I'll press and save
   till the end of my days.
    bob, it was better
 than ever imagined,
 real and deep,
 comfort and caring,
 effortless sharing,
     god-given fitting--
   words cannot tell
   my grateful wonder,
   but hearts can 
   (and bodies as well --
    or better)
   man 
   from my dreams,
   I thank you,
   bless you,
   release you,
   but hold the memory,
        holy-whole.

And what’s the back story here? Greg was my housemate, the good-looking, self-confident scion of a wealthy Connecticut family, who teased and tempted me until one night, when my boyfriend (who also lived in the house) was away for a week, I knocked on Greg’s bedroom door. As I have discussed in other blog posts, that rash action ultimately broke up my relationship with my boyfriend. However, all the housemates, including my ex, traveled from Pennsylvania to Darien for Greg’s wedding nine or ten months later.

Matt was the nineteen year old brother of Greg’s bride, in town with his family for the celebration. (I was twenty six.) Clever. Flirtatious. As the poem says, precocious. Enough said.

And Bob? (Who could possibly write a poem about someone named “Bob”?) Given the poem’s assertions, I’m embarrassed to admit that I barely remember him. A friend of Greg’s, I believe, who had shown up at our house parties. There had always been strong attraction between us, but he had a girlfriend. (And where was she that sunny June day? That information is lost to posterity.)

As I reconstruct things, Bob gave me a ride in the evening after the reception, back to the Hartford apartment of the female friend with whom I was staying. She was out. Bob and I shared a joint out on the apartment balcony. One thing led to another.

At the time, I clearly believed I’d experienced some sort of epiphany. And perhaps I did—even if the memory has faded.

My older self wonders whether he deliberately gave me a ride home just so he could get laid. I’d rather think his motives were less selfish. Certainly our connection that night felt more than just physical. But then, all my liaisons did.

I wouldn’t say the day chronicled by this poem was typical. However, it wasn’t some sort of fluke, either. There were other days during that period when I had sex with more than one person.

I’m not ashamed. I’m not sorry. And yes, I miss the breathless newness of sex back in those days.

That’s a big part of what I try to capture when I write erotica now.

Leaving the Garden - #innocence #fantasies #amwriting

I have been writing all my life, and publishing for nearly twenty years. Over that time, my work has changed considerably. Of course, I’ve become more adept from a craft perspective, writing more convincing dialogue, curbing my tendency to produce overlong sentences and so on. However, in this post I want to talk about a more fundamental issue—my loss of innocence.

My early works were naive translations of my favorite fantasies into prose. I’d had little exposure to erotica as a genre. I wasn’t following any sort of rules. I wrote what aroused me personally, without worrying about whether it would have the same effect on someone else. My heroines were sexually voracious, unapologetically experimental, brave, curious and eager for new experience. I was like that myself in those days. The women (and men) in my books were more so.

As a consequence, my first three novels, especially (Raw Silk, Miranda’s Masks and Nasty Business) feature all sorts of activities and couplings. Taken together, they include everything from cross-dressing to enemas—voyeurism and exhibitionism, homosexual and lesbian interactions, group sex, gang bangs, age play, fisting, golden showers, pegging, femdom, pseudo-incest, as well as spanking, flogging, bondage and the like. I wasn’t shy about writing it if it turned me on. And in those early days, before I’d read and written hundreds of thousands of erotic words, almost everything did.

I suspect that many writers of erotica began, like me, by exposing and exploring their own favorite scenarios of desire. The result is often searingly sexy. The author has poured his or her personal libidinous imaginings into the story, with all the accompanying emotions. Readers pick up on the emotional truth, and react to it. These self-disclosive stories are direct and intense. They hit you in the gut, or perhaps more appropriately, in the groin.

Even as I cringe at the quality of the writing, my early stories still have an intensity that melts me to a puddle of lust whenever I reread them.

As I became more familiar with the world of publishing, my work became less spontaneous, more consciously constructed. I began writing short stories to match anthology themes. I contracted with an erotic romance publisher and discovered that readers didn’t necessarily share my preference for pan-sexual diversity. Without realizing it, I acquired the knowledge of good and evil—or rather, marketable versus not.

My writing changed in response to this knowledge. I tamed my id to satisfy editors, reviewers and the public. At the same time, I was learning how to communicate more effectively through my prose, how to grab the reader’s attention and keep it focused where I wanted it. I moved away from writing as confession or self-gratification toward writing for an imagined audience. I acquired the ability to modify my style to match the preferences of that audience.

The market was changing at the same time. The readership for erotic fiction grew but I think the tolerance for extreme or unusual activities shrank. My pre-AIDs-era heroines who’d have unprotected sex with strangers if the mood was right began to seem shocking as well as old-fashioned. My occasional interest in enemas and golden showers would make the bulk of the reading community run away screaming—as well as getting me banned from Amazon.

Perhaps to compensate for the reduced sexual diversity in any one of my tales, I began to experiment with different forms. I wrote M/M, F/F, ménage, paranormal, historical, science fiction, steam punk, in addition to the BDSM that was my first love. As I’ve matured as a writer, I’ve gained the confidence to tackle new sub-genres. I even tried writing a tentacle porn story (“Fleshpot”, currently available in my dark paranormal collection Fourth World).

My publishing history makes me proud. I may not be as prolific as some of my peers, but I’m a far more skillful and accomplished writer than I was in 1999, when Raw Silk poured out of me in an excited frenzy. Still, I can’t help looking back with a sense of nostalgia to the days when reading my own work would leave me breathless and damp.

I’ve finally given up on the notion of being financially successful with my writing, and so I’ve decided to try suspending the censor and critic, if I can, and writing once more from my loins. I’m not the same woman I was back then, though. My life-changing initiation into dominance and submission is thirty years behind me. Memories grow pale and worn with constant rehearsal. I’m post-menopausal, a state which gives me new appreciation for the power of hormones. And I’m pretty well sated from reading erotica by others. It takes an extraordinary story these days to make an impression.

I’ve been away from the garden for a long time now. The gates are barred by time and experience. I have to accept that I may never write my way back into that state of innocence.