On Being Too Dirty

I think sometimes erotica writers talk like we're all trying to be the dirtiest, but that's not what really happens. At Oh Get a Grip this time, we're discussing the topic, "dirtiest story."

Over the two weeks we've been writing about this, we've found that it's hard to define what a "dirtiest story" might be.

I decided to write about the story that wound up feeling "too dirty" once I published it, in that most of the reaction I saw to it was about how it went too far.

It's an odd feeling, to write something that seems hot and poetic to me—dirty, yes, but in a way that thrills—and then feel like most people (who said something online) thought it was "too much" or "gross." Maybe another writer would take that in stride, but for me it maps too closely to the times I've felt too much or gross in real life.

Erotica writing can feel very vulnerable.

I talked about this a bit, and I posted an excerpt of the story, specifically from the part that I think pushed some readers too far. (It's about obsession with someone else's body, to the point of fetishizing their discarded objects).

If you'd like to read the whole post, you can find it here.

Shameless

"She was his beautiful, impossible creature: a woman, not reared to live in shame." -- from "Sealed" by Laila Blake, published in A Princess Bound: Naughty Fairy Tales for Women (ed. Kristina Wright).

This story is a complex exploration of the myth of the selkie, wound up with the concept of consent, with some breathplay and rope not only creating erotic tension but symbolizing the nature of the relationship between the main characters. Laila Blake is a masterful writer, and it's well worth reading.

I want to talk about the line I quoted, though. This line just breaks my heart and makes my gut twist. Blake's description feels true to me—a woman not reared to live in shame would seem like a beautiful, impossible creature indeed. I just don't want it to be true.

I've thought lately about how, despite so much effort to focus on female desire and female pleasure in much of the erotica that's being published, there are these moments when the curtain slips and one can see how low the societal standard for those things is. That we should take shame for granted—that the idea of being free of it should be an impossible dream... I feel like all of us ought to be up in arms about that.

Jean Roberta engages with this a great deal in her work. Her book The Flight of the Black Swan is an impressive envisioning of sex enjoyed without shame, and I'm sure it wasn't easy to write.

I notice in a lot of my reading the many signals that writers are sending that this particular thing is "nice" erotica, not "shameful" erotica. Especially in erotic romance, there are all these things—the heroine is acting out of character, overcome by the hotness of the hero. She'd never normally behave this way. It's been a long time since she had sex really. A lot of this amounts to, "She's not a slut." And she needs to not be a slut or else it seems like the sex becomes too illicit to be enjoyed. There's a flip side, of course—the eroticization of shame. That's a powerful tool, and maybe important for resistance.

More and more, though, I'm thinking about the question Roberta's asking in her work. What would this look like without shame?

And here's my question: Why are we taking "reared to live in shame" for granted?

Review: Alison Tyler's Dark Secret Love

I wish I'd had Alison Tyler's Dark Secret Love when I was young. This is the sort of fiction that can save a person—wise about the world, unashamed, unafraid of truth, full of voice and strength.

Something like this might have saved me from years of self-imposed sexual denial, the marriage based on pretending not to like the things I like, the visits to the therapist who tried to teach me how to fantasize about something "nice."

Tyler had me from word one of this book—the book starts hard and moves fast. She really captured me, however, when she wrote about the big mistake her main character Samantha makes—"depriving me of any sexual pleasure for three lonely years." That mistake turns out to be getting involved with a man who forces her to be someone she's not, and a lot of Dark Secret Love is about Samantha escaping from that terrible, soul-crushing sort of emotional bondage and finding freedom in the wild, sexy sort of bondage that she craves.

I've read plenty of books about doms and subs, pleasure and pain, but it's so rare and special to find one so raw and powerful. Samantha, the main character, seeks her own pleasure. She's no passive toy. She explores, makes mistakes, gets lucky, and slowly claims her own needs and desires.

I love the way Cleis Press designed the covers for this series, because even the covers of the books say this to me. They're girly and hard-core at the same time. Just looking at the cover of this book (and of the sequel, The Delicious Torment), I can see that what's being written about is a woman's pleasure.

There is a love story, a very important romance, but it takes its time arriving. I liked that. Every time a new man appeared, I wasn't sure how significant he would be or how long he would stay around, and that reflects life. Tyler knows the reader is expecting the happily ever after, and she makes a tease out of the reveal. It's a fun game.

Samantha's journey is also very hot. It's filled with delicious scenes of spanking, bondage, public display, anal sex, and the testing of limits, and all of them ring with authenticity.

When Tyler writes about her main character being caned, she talks about getting six strokes (more eventually, because the count inevitably starts over, but the amount she and her top are talking about her taking is six). I appreciated this because, for anyone who has any idea of how much caning can hurt, six is the sort of number that ought to be getting talked about. As soon as I read "six," I knew this book was written by someone who knows the deal.

I read it in a delicious buzz of arousal. It's the sort of book that screws up plans—plans of starting work on time, of going to bed, or of going anywhere. But I found that what I appreciated most, even more than the heat of it, was having Tyler's strong voice as a companion. It healed me to read about Samantha admitting what she needed. I have so often wondered why I couldn't just have "normal sex," so I was moved when Samantha also wonders why. I felt her relief every time she found a man who understood those needs in any way. I felt her appreciation for those men and her enjoyment of them.

Samantha's insights often seared me or stunned me. Tyler's prose is clean and clear, presenting her character's revelations as nakedly as the character so often presents herself.

I will admit that I sometimes am bored these days by reading about what I think of as basic BDSM—some handcuffs here, a whipping there. Tyler's writing reminded me that when a person lives it, needs it, and does it with connection, there's nothing boring or basic about any of it. It was refreshing to be turned on as hell over things I sometimes now find run of the mill. It made me wonder how it could ever be boring to me. It made me remember what it was like to want it so badly and be afraid to even whisper about what I wanted.

Late in the book, Samantha says, "Good-girl sex, the type I always imagine other people to be having in their dark bedrooms every night, with minty breath and cooing dove talk, that sort of sex isn't meant for me."

I've had similar thoughts, but I don't think I ever put it so boldly to myself. The most important books I've read are the ones that manage to say what I need to say but can't quite articulate. The author says her piece and somehow in the process also gives me a lost piece of myself.

***

I'm honored to be part of the blog tour for Dark Secret Love. You can see all the stops here. Be sure to check out the tour post, because it includes an exciting giveaway!

This is the official blurb:

Keep Your Safe Word Handy
Dark Secret Love is a modern-day Story of O, a 9 1/2 Weeks-style journey fueled by lust, longing and the search for true love. Inspired by her own BDSM exploits and private diaries, Alison Tyler draws on twenty-five years of penning sultry stories to create a scorchingly hot work of fiction, a memoir-inspired novel with reality at its core. A luscious and literary experience of authenticity, Dark Secret Love is a romance for readers who desire sweetness edged with danger and a kinky fairy tale with a happily-ever-after ending. Take a deep breath and prepare to submit. Alison Tyler will push your boundaries to the limits—and have you begging for more.

And Alison Tyler's bio:

ALISON TYLER is a prolific author of erotic fiction and is the editor of Three-Way, Heat Wave, Best Bondage Erotica, Love at First Sting, and Naughty or Nice. She lives in San Francisco and has a well-traveled website at AlisonTyler.com.

Cleis Press's info page about the book is here.

Being Defined by the Past

Another snip from Jean Roberta's excellent Sex Is All Metaphors:

I wonder why sex is usually treated as an exceptional activity which must be judged differently from every other kind. Most people acquire job histories over time as well as sexual track records, yet few middle-aged brain surgeons are permanently stigmatized for having flipped burgers in a part- time job as pre-med students. No one wants to be defined for all time as they were in the past.

This quote is from an essay called, "Retro-Shame, or the Persistence of the Past." I don't have much to add, except that I really like this point.

Shame Still Holds Me Back

In my latest post on Eros and Thanatos, I talk about what still scares me as a writer:

If I had to model the way shame works for me, I'd get a set of Russian dolls and use them to sort out the layers of it. On the outer, biggest doll, I'd paint the word "sex." Then, as I moved deeper into the set, I would get more specific. "Kink." "Pain-slut." "Non-consent as turn-on."

The way I displayed the Russian dolls would express how well I was dealing with that shame. Years ago, that set of dolls would have been at the bottom of a drawer in a dresser tucked in the back of my closet. Today, it's on top of the bookshelf in the living room, right near my copy of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women (the book is actually in my living room; the strained-metaphor dolls are not).

You can read the rest here.

Nothing Shocking About Shame

I've been thinking lately about how the supposedly daring movie Shame illustrates how little our culture has developed its attitudes about sex beyond high school level.

The main reason I can see for its reputation as daring is that it includes full frontal male nudity. OK, that was why I went to see the movie in the theater. I certainly didn't mind getting a really good look at every part of Michael Fassbender.

But other than that, I thought it reinforced a lot of stereotypes about sex. The main character struggles with a lot of disgust about himself and his desires that makes it hard to see any of the sex as actually hot. And that's a big thing for the crushing moral sense that pervades the movie. I felt like there was a sense of punishment, and the movie was so busy punishing the character that both he and the audience weren't allowed to really enjoy any sex.

There were moments of his degradation that I found sort of comical. For example, at one point, he throws away his porn collection. I think I'm supposed to be shocked at how much there is and how lurid it is. Instead, I fought the urge to burst out laughing in the theater. My first thought was, "Who has porn on paper and video these days? Doesn't the man have a laptop? Smart phone?" My second thought was, "Is that it?"

At another point, he's trying to pick up a girl in a bar and I think I was supposed to be stunned by his dirty talk. First, he tells her how much he loves going down on a woman and how he wants to make her come. Then he tells her boyfriend that he's going to fuck her in the ass and gets punched the moment he steps outside. OK. Not the coolest behavior. And, yeah, hearing Fassbender's voice saying those words was pretty hot -- I wouldn't mind a specialized recording (minus the punching sound effects). But it all felt angled the wrong way, like I was supposed to be disturbed less by his lack of self-control or poor etiquette and more by the fact that he was willing to talk at all about fucking a girl in the ass or going down on her.

I felt irritated by that, and my irritation increased as the character continued to "hit bottom" with his sex addiction. From getting punched out, he goes immediately to (gasp!) a gay bar, where he (double gasp!) hooks up with a man(!!!?!). Clearly, a sexual experience with another man is the height of debauchery and dissolution. The character is so desperate that he will willingly let a man go down on him. (Can you detect my sarcasm here?). It was deeply disappointing to me that the movie was arranged this way -- I think I was supposed to feel horrified that he was willing to stoop to the gay. Now, it may not have been a sign of his emotional health that he's willing to get a blow job from... whoever... but I didn't think it was any worse to get one from a random man than from a random woman (and he's been doing stuff with all kinds of random women for the whole movie). I felt like the scene exploited our society's homophobic tendencies.

Finally, I had to roll my eyes at the followup to the gay scene. The character immediately goes somewhere else, where he manages to have a threesome with two women. I read this as the movie needing to prove that he's still straight. He still "really a man," not secretly gay (and therefore "not really a man").

The definition of hitting bottom felt all wrong, simultaneously shaming and glorifying all the wrong stuff.

So, Fassbender is hot as hell (but most especially as Magneto in X-Men: First Class), and the movie raised some interesting issues. But its main effect on me was to illustrate some of the mental twists our society has around sex.

This is not to say that people can't behave in a shameful way about sex, or that Fassbender's character is a shining example of how one ought to be. But I think a lot of the techniques used to illustrate his shameful behavior were more about a general fear of sex than anything else.