Music Mondays: "Blunderbuss" by Jack White

"Such a trick pretending not to be doing what you want to, but seems like everybody does this every waking moment. ... Doing what two people need is never on the menu."
-- Jack White



I keep meaning to declare Jack White appreciation month, but don't time things right. So I'll just start posting awesome Jack White songs -- and this might go on a while.

I love this song for the little bursts of defiance that punctuate a narrative of desire.

This is off his solo album, Blunderbuss, and I'd recommend every single song on that. Been listening to it nonstop for weeks.

Freedom for a Small Part

Tentacle stories get me excited, so I'm totally stoked to have signed a contract to appear in Coming Together: Arm in Arm in Arm, edited by Nobilis Reed.

Reed is, amazingly enough, an experienced editor of tentacle porn -- he edited a previous book, Tentacle Dreams. And I'm expecting Arm in Arm in Arm to be pretty awesome. Here's a clip from how he described what he wanted:

Tentacle sex celebrates helplessness in the face of ravenous, remorseless, undeniable lust. I want to see stories with characters, settings, and plots. People change. The world is revealed. Things happen. They don't have to be deep, but they have to be there.

I want to see stories that stretch the boundaries of what defines tentacle porn. "Demon appears out of nowhere and rapes unsuspecting victim" is boring. Even hentai anime isn't doing that anymore. Give me more than that.

That line about ravenous, remorseless, undeniable lust stuck with me. In my story, "Freedom for a Small Part," I wanted to play with that idea. My tentacle creature starts out representing that stuff, lurking, threatening. But the main character eventually starts to wonder what it really wants. Might it be playing a role that helps it to stay alive?

Like all Coming Together books, this one's for charity. Proceeds benefit Oceana, an organization that works to protect the world's oceans. (I always wish I could see the look on someone's face at an organization like this when they figure out where the latest donation check came from).

I think you're going to want to pick this book up when it comes out, but if you want to indulge in a little erotic charity now, may I remind you of my two other titles with Coming Together? The Six Swans is a sexy retelling of the fairy tale, and it benefits Kiva, an organization that provides microloans to entrepreneurs all over the world. Coming Together: As ONE is a collection of menage erotica that benefits ONE, the campaign to end global poverty. My story is about the follower of Artemis who serves as a bridge between the goddess and a favorite male hunter.

What Is Kinky, Anyway?

The word "kinky" gets thrown around a lot, but when you think about it, its meaning is pretty unclear. As I mentioned recently, when Cosmo gives a list of kinky sex tips, they're normally suggesting things like "tell your man exactly what you want him to do to you, and where" (which I would consider basic sexual communication). They might suggest you blindfold him or something.

In my own head, "kinky" means nipple clamps and floggers and pinwheels and other tools of BDSM.

I'm pretty sure it can mean plenty of other things. Maybe there are people who wouldn't call something kinky unless it involves a violet wand and a urethral sound. And it doesn't have to involve pain. It could be a kinky for a man to put on his girlfriend's underwear -- It's probably kinky if he puts on his boyfriend's underwear, too.

So when I think about it, kinky starts to mean everything and nothing, which is problematic, since I consider myself kinky.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines "kinky" as "involving or given to unusual sexual behavior." This definition seems right on, because it pinpoints the problem: the word "unusual."

What's unusual to the average Cosmo reader might not be unusual to me. What's unusual to me might not be unusual to a person in a fluid-bonded poly family. This, I think, explains a lot of the typical arguments about whether something or someone is "actually" kinky (and I find these arguments pretty annoying most of the time).

Kinky is a spectrum word and comes with all the associated confusion. In relation to the word "unusual," it might also mean, "behavior for which someone else might shame you." In the purest form, anyone doing anything beyond m/f missionary within a marriage could claim it, I guess.

But I'd like to say that it means more than that, that there is a realm of sexual behavior that is actually unusual. To clarify this, I'll start by talking about what isn't unusual. I think there are a few things. Pretty much everyone feels pleasure through the genitals, for example. It's not kinky to touch someone there and expect that to be pleasurable.

There are other things that I would expect the vast majority of people to enjoy. For example, talking to your lover(s) about exactly what you want him/her/them to do to you, and where, would result in pleasure for just about everybody, assuming it's possible to get hangups and shame out of the way.

There are activities, on the other hand, that I would not expect everyone to enjoy. I like to get hurt during sex, for example, but I really don't think that has universal appeal. It's a common enough kink, but I don't think that anyone who tried it would necessarily like it.

So I think my real definition of kinky is along those lines -- activities that one could not reasonably expect everyone to enjoy. Things you need to ask your lover about before doing. I don't consider oral sex kinky, and I wouldn't ask before going down -- there's the pleasure to genitals thing again. However, I'd certainly ask before dripping hot candle wax on someone, for example, because I wouldn't expect everyone to enjoy that.

It's not a perfect definition, but I think the key thing is to note that there are two aspects floating around when the word "kinky" gets used. Sometimes people are talking about practices that could be considered weird or unusual by society (I think oral sex was in this category relatively recently). Sometimes they're talking about practice that it wouldn't be reasonable to expect everyone to enjoy (such as pain).

In this light, it makes sense that Cosmo's idea of kinky tends to fall in the first category -- they're trying to appeal to a broad and general readership, so I think they're looking for tips that will give people a thrill and make them feel they're going outside the mainstream, but not tips that would only be pleasurable for a niche group of people.

The Aim of Porn

I recently realized something that might explain why it took me a long time to learn to appreciate male/male erotica. Though I read erotica much more than I watch porn, my first experiences of explicit portrayal of sex were through porn -- men introduced me to that, and erotica was something I found on my own. And most porn is produced with a male audience in mind.

A lot of men like watching lesbian porn, but it's pretty clear that the "lesbians" you typically see in such a production are chosen with straight men in mind. They usually look the way a man might want them to, and the things they do together are often designed to arouse men. (I'm not talking here about porn produced by and for actual lesbians).

However, gay male porn is again mostly produced with men in mind, so here again you'll see actors who look like and do things intended to appeal to a male audience.

I've seen a lot of arguments about male/female porn and the effects of its similar targeting toward a male audience, but that's a complicated issue that I don't want to get into here.

The point is that, in typical mainstream porn, whether you're watching straight, lesbian, or gay porn, you're probably watching something intended for male consumption. Recently, I realized that the male/male scenes I enjoy need a different angle. Basically, I want a female version of what's done for men in lesbian porn. I want the men I see together to have a look that would appeal to a female, and to do things to each other that a female wants to see. I've never encountered this in film porn, so I thought for a long time that I just didn't like male/male scenes.

The experience that changed my mind turned out to be a video game. I played Dragon Age 2 as a male character, and carried out a romance with another male character, pretty much on a whim. I was stunned by how hot that turned out to be for me. But when I thought about it more, it made more sense.

In lesbian porn aimed at males, you basically have straight-appearing females who happen to want to make out with each other. I think this helps men imagine those females would be open to them, say, joining in, which I think is a typical part of the fantasy. I had the same experience with the Dragon Age 2 characters. Both of the men read straight to me visually, which made it possible for me to fantasize about them without my sense of reality intruding. I bought their romance with each other a whole lot more than I buy most events in lesbian porn aimed at males but, hey, mainstream porn's never been known for its plot.

It's hard for me to fantasize about people I'm sure would not be interested in me, and when I watch gay porn and read the characters as really gay, I feel sort of shut out, or like I wouldn't have a chance, and my arousal doesn't really activate.

I've been experimenting with reading male/male erotica recently, and have found the principle to hold true. I appreciate reading about gay men in terms of story, but I only find it arousing if they seem bi or heteroflexible. This may not be the way it works for everyone, but for me male/male erotica arouses when it follows this pattern. (As an aside, I've long appreciated male/male erotica that doesn't arouse me, because it allows me to read for story and really appreciate the romance, rather than frantically flipping forward to find the next "good part.")

Why Seal the Section?

Cosmo made a big deal about the sealed section in its July issue, which was apparently "so hot, they made us seal it" -- according to the copy on the cover. I long ago learned not to get too excited about Cosmo's sex tips and articles, since they typically amount to "touch him on the penis:"



Not to mention that their idea of kinky is usually along the lines of bringing an ice cube to bed.

But I got curious about the sealed section. Who are "they?" Was there really some sort of legal requirement to seal the section? (Or was it a requirement passed down by an editor?)

The section turned out to be a set of articles and infographics on the penis. One in particular caught my eye and seriously undermined the claim that the section had to be sealed. That article discussed which term should be used to refer to the penis, mostly by weighing the merits of "dick" vs. "cock," and including a bunch of improbable foreign slang terms. But Cosmo didn't say "dick" or "cock" at all -- if they had, I suppose I might have understood the sealing. Instead, they said, "the d-word" and "the c-word," just as they do in this web post about the section.

I sat there way too long racking my brain, trying to figure out one thing that might require sealing. I saw no vulgar language, no images more risque than those in an underwear catalog, and no erotica. The section included one comedic essay a dude wrote about his penis and a bunch of research and infographics (of varied provenance) that I hope didn't require sealing, because they seemed mostly scientific. It covered ground similar to what I consider basic sex education, though with more fun presentation.

I was left hoping this sealing thing was just a gimmick, not a real requirement. If some legal or financial authority truly made Cosmo seal the section, then the state of sex education in the United States is even sadder than I feared.

Art and Pornography

There was recently some discussion online about using "the wet test" when evaluating about erotica. I did a couple posts, one about reading erotica for reasons other than arousal, and one about writing erotica for reasons other than arousal.

I came across a great passage over the weekend that sums up my position, from Geoff Nicholson's book Sex Collectors:

Some people used to say that art was good because it was celebratory and porn was bad because it was masturbatory, but now we all say, what's so wrong with masturbation? Camille Paglia says, "What people call pornography is simply the moment when the physicality of the act becomes obtrusive to them." I say the difference between art and pornography is this: you can masturbate to art if you want, but you don't have to. It still has an appeal and a function even if it doesn't get you aroused. Whereas if a piece of pornography doesn't get you aroused, then it's a complete failure, and few things are worse than failed pornography.

I found this a useful distinction. I think what I was trying to get at with my earlier posts was that I see erotica as art. However, when I started to read it, I read it as porn -- I wanted to get off. I think its purpose is still confused, and writers and readers approach it as art or porn or both, not always being clear what they're going for.

Music Mondays: "Want It Back" by Amanda Palmer and The Grand Theft Orchestra

"He's already on the outskirts. I'm still pulling on his sweatshirt. He says fate is not a factor. I'm in love with every actor."
--Amanda Palmer



Considering that I discovered this song moments ago, it seemed like a great time to start back up with Music Mondays. Check out the lovely, erotic, disturbing aesthetic to this video. This is a great example of the interplay between the erotic and the artistic. Amanda Palmer looks stunning and sexy, and the drawing on her nude body also introduces a visual vocabulary of brazen vulnerability. Enjoy!