10. Vanilla

Sunday, June 15, 2008

There are a few things I never mentioned about the discussion I had with my family member last year. At the time they were too irrelevant, or too personal. But one of them’s popped up under my skin in the last few days, like a little irritating blood blister.

They said:

The way you use the word “vanilla” in your blog is bigoted.

At the time I thought, Bigoted? Really? That seems like a harsh choice of vocabulary.

But as you may recall, I did not choose to rise up in righteous indignation after being censored by scallywags. I chose to take on some of the responsibility for what had happened, because I wasn’t defining my language or giving context for my actions.

When I got home that week I searched my entire blog for every time I’d used the word “vanilla.” Not counting the two vanilla gentlemen on my blogroll, it came up about fifteen times. Of those instances, one was a poetic comparison of May’s bum to the silkiness of vanilla ice cream. The majority were times in which I used the word to mean “not-kinky.” One was a bit of an arrogant statement about stupid, male, vanilla movie producers. I figured that the last instance was fair; I was being a bit of a snarky brat in that entry. Which, by the way, is an entry you’ll no longer find here. It’s one of the two that did not survive my great blogging purge and password initiative. The other one was about my mother.

But really, it’s all those tricky “not-kinky” instances that are the sinkholes.

I would argue that saying my use of the word “vanilla” here is bigoted is, frankly, absurd. To be bigoted means essentially to be intolerant of identities which are not my own. I work very hard to be tolerant, because that’s one of the best ways I know to gain tolerance for myself. I have spoken before about sneaky selfish motivations.

Currently the blogosphere has vanilla on the brain. Renegade Evolution has taken on the idea of vanilla privilege, while Trinity over at The Strangest Alchemy has opened up her blog for a discussion on the definition of this very tricky idea.

Also, closer to home and all of a sudden, I have some new readers. (Hello, ladies.) And from their conversations with me, their blogs, and their attitudes, I get the feeling that vanilla just isn’t cool these days, much in the same way Maja once used “het,” hilariously, as a neo-semi-pejorative. That seems a bit unfair to me. Vanilla is unfortunately conflated with sex-negativity in a way that is simply not true.

I was asked several times in my ACON group to define what kinky sex is. I found myself at a bit of a loss. I have spent so long just being kinky that to start defining what kinky means for a broader audience is insanely difficult. Like many other words that must be personally defined before becoming useful, I can only really speak about what kinky means to me.

For me, to be kinky is to enjoy sex or enjoy things I consider to be sexual while maintaining a deliberate power imbalance.

And going from there, to have vanilla sex, as I have had many times in the past, is to enjoy sex or enjoy sexual things without such a deliberate imbalance.

And yes, I know, that is a simply enormous definition. It’s also, you may notice, a definition that relies heavily upon intention and thought, mental perspectives rather than weapons and gear. It’s not what I do, it’s how I do it. That means that a lot of my kinky sex can look very, very vanilla. But it works for me. Maybe it works for you. If it doesn’t, I invite you to redefine.

I think there is such a thing as vanilla privilege, but it’s hard to pin down where my ability to access that privilege begins and ends. Similar to my access to straight privilege, I can pass as vanilla sometimes. Although curiously, it is much easier for me to pass as straight than it is for me to pass as vanilla. May and I still get funny glances when we walk down the street, my hand on his collar and his head bowed, that little-boy grin on his face, that lazy toppish look on mine. People do stare at us in restaurants. They do think we’re strange at parties. But it works, because we are essentially considered eccentric rather than threatening. I think it’s because we look straight.

And there is also a low level of bigotry in some corners of the kink community, as there seem to be in all communities. My new blog readers will probably run into that, unfortunately. Hell knows I have. I just wrote that the clothing I think is sexy looks vanilla. I have been called a vanilla tourist a few times. I have even been asked, by a very large man at the door to Paddles, if I was lost. I wanted to laugh at him. No, I responded, I am definitely not lost.

Attitudes like that are why I try to go places with people, when they’re new. They’re why I still appreciate having people to go with. That reaction is why having a group of kinky friends is an infinitely valuable advantage when trying to find one’s place in a kinky community.

And attitudes like that are why I also have vanilla friendships. Screw this secret-exciting-sex-club mentality. Really, my sex looks spicy from an outside perspective, but it’s just a way of having sex. Vanilla’s just another way of having sex. I’m wired one way. Someone else is wired another. It all works out, in the end.

Labels: Filed in Annoyance, Attacked, Choice, Cultural Pluralism, Emphatic Gestures, Fluidity, Language, Out and Proud, Politics, Psychology, Reality, Scene, Self-Awareness, Us Versus Them | Comments (4)

How To Write Porn For Me

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

For one reason or another, more text-based porn than usual has made it across my radar in the last few weeks. (Thank you for the links, gentlemen, you are very sweet.) And it’s gotten me thinking. (And other things as well.)

 Most pornographic stories are bad; a vast and sweeping generalization, I know, but I’ll let it slide for the moment. However, more often they are not so much bad as they are off target. They make me feel like ringing the author to say “Great effort, but the judges just couldn’t relate to your performance.”

 And it occurs to me that while many, many, many resources exist to enable better writing, not many resources exist that are specifically designed to teach a writer how to target their audience. In fact, I would venture that most of us can’t really manage to write for audiences unlike ourselves, even when we actually try to (and, let’s face it, most of us don’t even try.) Especially regarding this particular subject matter.

And look, I’m not talking about great literature here. I’m talking wank material. Brown paper wrappings. Not safe for work. Porn. Which can still be great literature; the two are not mutually exclusive, although they do entail different perspectives and skills. It’s a bit of an alien experiment for most of us, the writing of porn. I don’t often write it, and you readers never see it when I do.

So, in my half helpful, half rantish mood, I thought I’d give a little Cliff Notes version of how to target porn for an audience I might relate to. Namely, dominant women. (Solipsism? On a blog? Impossible.)

This is how to write porn for me. Not that I expect you to, and not that I’m anticipating that any of you actually will. But many people try, and the success rate is just too low to ignore. So if you’ve ever been curious how to write pornography that a dominant woman would enjoy, here’s my side of the story. (I highly encourage each of you to write your own list for your orientation as well. I’m tempted to meme that suggestion, but I don’t think the world really needs more memes.)

Onward, and leaving aside the obvious things like “write about kinky sex” and “yes, women read porn too” and “yes, male bottoms are sexy” and “yes, as a matter of fact I am queer,” here is the not-so-secret list of hints and tricks. 

1. Get out of my head.
Many of the stories I read are entirely made up of long, complicated inner monologues about arousal and angst and the contemplation of dominance. I give this tactic a great big failing mark in bright red pen. Remember the purpose of the piece. If you’re writing academic prose or fiction, go ahead and explore the psyche of your dominant character. Interesting? Definitely interesting. Sexy? Not sexy. Pornography is not contemplation. Pornography is action.

 One of the questions we keep asking about pornography is how the reader relates to the characters, i.e. what character will I choose to inhabit? As I have mentioned before, I usually resist “inhabiting” dominant characters, because they annoy me. Instead I will eroticise a third-person perspective of a story, or inhabit the character of the submissive in order to better translate their reactions into wankable material. I would rather not have to do this, but inevitably I find dominant women in pornography alienating and annoying, not because they’re behaving stupidly or doing something I don’t relate to, but because they just won’t shut up.

1a, related: Skip my orgasm.
Unless it advances the plot or is necessary to complete the story, you can leave out all of the bits about the shock waves and juiciness the me-character is feeling. Usually when I get to this part I skim over the lines, usually while thinking, “Been there. Done that. Trying to get there again. Don’t need a guidebook.”

2. Focus on the bottom.
Following very obviously from the above points is this; I don’t want the focus of my pornography to be on the character I’m supposed to be inhabiting, but on the character I find attractive. Or, as other women have said before me, omigod hot slaves! Get the view off the dominant and onto the submissive. I want the bottom’s monologue, the bottom’s reactions, the bottom’s screams, the bottom’s emotions. I want to read the side of the story that I find sexy. Shocker: that’s not me.

3. Write my kinks.
Obviously I would love it if every pornographic story I read was about the things I love. Wouldn’t we all? Give me harem slaves, give me cages and heavy metal, whips and chains, tenderness and flinching, slapping and strengths and service. Give me fantasy and living artwork and quirky details. Give me rituals, love, slavery, fear. Give me characters who are joyful, who are confident, genderqueer, beautiful, funny, sexy, smart, skilled. And especially, give me great long strings of language and all of those searing, desperate words I love.

4. Write your kinks.
My kinks aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and as far as I’m concerned that’s fine. If none of the things I like get you off, then write about something that does get you off. Showcase your specific enthusiasm and passion, and the arousal will translate.

5. Write well.
I know that as you’ve been reading this you’ve been mentally gearing up for my (hopefully witty, you cross your fingers) contribution to the titanic outpouring of hatred against improper grammar, spelling, and punctuation that already floats about online. You can stop bracing yourself; you won’t get it. Two points on this:

Point the first: It’s porn, for fuckssake.
When it’s porn I really don’t care. I will not be brought back from the brink of orgasm by a misplaced apostrophe. (Honestly, if you’re brought back from the brink of orgasm by something so minor, I would suggest that you examine your grammatical hang-ups with a more critical eye.) In literature these things are important. In porn, frankly, not so much. I spoke out strongly against the Kushiel series recently not because they aren’t good pornography (they contain, in fact, some scattered moments of very good pornography) but because they aren’t good literature.

And point the second: Of course I would prefer proper grammar, proper spelling, proper punctuation, but good writing is not the same as these things. I suspect that many potentially good writers (pornographic and otherwise) don’t write because they fear being vilified over these aspects of their craft. And, of course, because on the internet there are no full time copy editors.

When I say “write well,” I mean to present developed characters, engaging scenarios, powerful interactions, and emotional growth. That sounds more complex than I could rightly ask for in pornography, but it’s actually a deceptive set of very simple ideas. A character can grow emotionally by simply moving from pain to acceptance. Our erotic imaginations have scenarios and interactions galore. As I said, pornography is about action. And as for character, which seems to stump so many people, hell, there are characters everywhere. Write slash if you don’t want to make your own. Appropriate your friends. Appropriate people you see on the street or meet in shopping centers. Appropriate your blogroll. I’ve been appropriated in pornography a few times in the past, and it always seems to turn out remarkably well.

And that’s it. It’s not a very long list, being the Cliff Notes version. But as May said last night when I was ranting the baby beginnings of this post at him, “Sex just isn’t that complicated.” And in the end, he’s right.

Now that I’ve written all of this down, I think I might just go write some pornography of my own. Who am I writing for? What’s on your how-to list?

Labels: Filed in Annoyance, Dominance, Eroticism, Fantasy, Humor, I Like, Language, Noises, Porn, Psychology, Smartness, Weird Wiring | Comments (27)

The Pen Is The Tongue Of The Mind

Monday, May 12, 2008

I’ve joined FetLife, a curious experience simultaneously stimulating my interest in social dynamics and making me want to stab unwitting stuffed animals with forks. I should begin by saying that despite my intermittent screeching noises, it really is a good site and a sound premise, and hopefully it grows into something of a real community.

The stabbing, you ask? Ah yes. The site is simply a little microcosm of kink, and as such occasionally prompts me to sharpen forks.

The well shot, well proportioned, laughably stereotypical picture on the home page of an older, greying man holding the throat of a young, beautiful, bound woman is thankfully no longer getting under my skin, because Maymay is a computer genius. I asked him to make sure that picture never shows when I load the home page, he fiddled a bit, wrote some code doohicky, and voila. Customized log in, Eileen-annoyance free.

And since changing my orientation from “Dominant” to “Top,” I am no longer identified under a gendered abbreviation. Unless some shockingly clever person manages to push “toppe” through as the new label-du-jour, I suppose.

And I admit, I refused to friend the three young men from New South Wales who each requested foot worship sessions with me.

But these things? They are just my little nitpicks. They are not really problems, per say. Just a friendly confirmation that the quirks of our subculture are alive and kicking. And yet, I am beginning to reconsider my membership. This may be part of a massive shift in my life which has pushed my kink awareness under in favor of work and domesticity.

The thing about a microcosm of kink is that no matter how hard I try, it’s only a matter of time before something crosses my radar that just inflames me. And no, I’m not talking about the big issues here. Oh no, I’m perfectly capable of becoming inflamed over tiny things that people less prone to passionate annoyance will shrug off, or simply fail to notice.

I joined The Kinky Intellectual’s Book Club FetLife group. And as I did so, I made a tiny internal bet with myself. “What do you bet, Eileen, that this group will go three days without mentioning Kushiel’s Dart?”

“I bet nothing. I refuse to throw perfectly good money away.”

Good thing I didn’t bet. But oh, the annoyance.

As I have previously mentioned, I have read Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series. At the time, I was ambivalent toward them. They are not staggering works of literary genius. They are passable fantasy that occasionally wanders into “decent” territory. (Yes, you may dispute this. I have high standards. We know this by now.) I am no longer ambivalent. I feel now, toward these books, an annoyance that momentarily lingers on inflamed irrational rage.

I have had these books recommended to me on a rate of about four times a year for the past six years. I am sick of being told I should read these fucking books, so sick, in fact, that I will now sometimes, in very snippy moods, head off sentences that begin with “Have you ever read…” by interrupting, “Carey? Yes, I have.” They do not deserve this overflow of effusive praise. They are simply not that good.

The Kushiel series, along with a very few other titles that compose the core (and only) BDSM fiction reading list for those of us not inclined to get our wanks from online erotica, operate within a starvation economy that skyrockets their value far beyond anything my tastes will allow. We are so desperate for kinky material that’s been proofread and couched in narrative that we will devour, praise and pimp the passable. And since I’ve written here before about my utterly devastating erotic obsession with artistic skill, one can imagine how this makes me feel.

From here I veer off in two directions, both writerly in nature. Starvation economy of words? Duh. Create more words.

There is the little tickle in the back of my brain, the one that moans of how unfair it is that to find kink content I like I’m best off creating it myself. But that little tickle is the remenant of an indignation that has long since fizzled down; it is, after all, not unfair for me to produce content if I genuinely love producing content.

On the one hand, there is that distinct temptation: “Eileen, how about you write a nice juicy kink/fantasy crossover novel? You’d be rich! Rich, I say!” I’ve gone far enough down this road to have sketched a setting, a plot, some subplots. I’ve done character profiles, even toyed with the first few pages. I have, essentially, a half-decent, passable working novel idea. But I’m still feeling my way through fantasy genre writing, and I don’t know how I feel about writing passable novels.

And then, there is the hand that wants to write the real story down. The story that’s on this blog and all the natty details in between, all blended up in a realist half-fiction that’s more worth the time it would take to write and the time it would take to read. I want to write kink and love the way Stephen Elliot writes kink and love. I want to squash Mistress Nan off the market and completely redefine the “real experiences of a dominant woman” in all their intricate, clumsy, laughable, joyful ache and glory.

A telling insight on my ego: I desire to possess skill and desire to possess the skilled. I keep falling flat on my face for artists and writers, the body as a metaphor for the intellect, the intellect as a metaphor for the body. Or, to put it bluntly: the better I craft, the hotter I get. The better you craft, the hotter you get.

Labels: Filed in Annoyance, Art, Body, Eroticism, Fantasy, Geek, I Like, Language, Smartness, Weird Wiring | Comments (18)

Six Months Later

Sunday, April 13, 2008

It is almost six months since the day I fought with a family member and this blog eventually went dark. I wrote for two months on that story, and then stopped. It would be nice to think that the issue also stopped, that by refusing to write more about it I essentially exorcised it from my life. But by now we should all know better.

It is time now to revisit. It is, in fact, insistently necessary.

Many of the comments I recieved during the initial shock commented on my strength, or my rationality, or the capability demonstrated by my reaction. I remain grateful for the support and kindness, although at the time a part of me thought this was all a bit odd. I just did what I had to do, I thought. I did what I needed to do to survive and still be able to look myself in the face at the end of the day.

I commented recently on Under The Boot that although I have more issues than I can shake a stick at, most of them don’t make it to this forum. Most of them sit in a wasteland of stubbed text documents in a folder on my desktop, abandoned. What I didn’t mention in the comment is that even these stubs are an achievement for me. I keep them around long after they become just bits of digital clutter.

My family member and I eventually decided to leave our argument alone, brush it under the rug and go on with our lives, so to speak. Here’s what you have to understand for the rest of this to make sense: this is exactly the way I’ve dealt with every pyschological issue since I was ten years old. It has taken me years, tears, and a lot of wincing at my own stupidity to get me to acknowledge and address issues head on, to write down my musings, to practice self-awareness. Even now I’m not very good at it. I often approach problems sideways, wending my way like a crab.

I moved to Australia, I essentially erased my life and started over, and I thought that would be the end of it. I thought to myself, Damn it, I have dealt with this. Enough is enough. This pain is firmly locked away in a dark part of my mind, if not exorcised completely.

Of course I was lying to myself. Of course that was complete bullshit. Of course it still hurts. Probing the wound is as easy as reading my archives.

I still, occasionally, cry until I’m exhausted enough to sleep. I still find my self-confidence weakened. And I still sometimes want to scream whenever my family member comes to the phone, flush with that initial childish anger: 

I turned 25 last month. I’m just a kid. I’m not supposed to hurt this much. 

It didn’t have to be this way. 

Why did you do this to me?

And because I am brilliantly twisted enough to make even this into a completely personal guilt trip (instead of a partially personal one), I can’t help but think that if I were really as strong as I appear to be, things would be better by now.

This blog has slowed to a trickle, and if the truth be told, it’s not just because I uprooted my life and lost my Internet access. It is also because this forum has undeniably changed, and it’s becoming clearer to me as time passes that the changes are not for the better.

One of the reasons I like blogging is that I like to go back and read what I’ve written. I like to mine my old words for new ideas. I have not read back in several months, because when I try to I cannot get my family member’s face out of my head: their thoughts when they read my words, their concern and outrage. The red carpet of our living room that I stared at while they yelled at me over Thanksgiving weekend. I begin to think that I should just change the blog’s background to a picture of that damned carpet, and give up any hope of ever separating msyelf from that pain again.

What this means is that every time I open a new post and begin to write, the words feel ungainly and weighted. Everything is filtered through the lense of potential pain. The headline flashes: Who Might Be Reading This Time?

I wrote that I would continue to speak out because I recognize that speaking out helps people. I still believe that. I refused to move this blog, find a new place, go to ground and drop from the radar. I figured that doing so would be useless, the damage done.

But I didn’t manage to throw off the hurt and worry and blithely continue. Not just here, but in my entire life, things changed. My fantasies changed. My kinks shifted. Even the way I kiss my boy changed, for a little while. I tried to keep writing, keep teaching, keep fucking and playing, while it became increasingly clear that every time I wrote, taught, fucked, played, I was committing a political act.

I wanted desperately to retreat, to be safe again, to just sweep it all under the rug and get on with things, maybe in a different way, maybe the same. But I didn’t, because politically and personally I don’t believe I should have to retreat and disappear to make things better.

It is cloyingly noble, and it makes me a bit embarrassed. Especially with this next part thrown in.

I have to admit something, and doing so is painful in itself. I was not prepared for how exhausting it is when the only thing that keeps me writing is the uncanny idea that if I don’t keep writing, the sexual terrorists will win. 

The initial explosion didn’t kill me, but the little everyday grinding reminders might yet finish me off.

Perhaps this entire thought process bespeaks of lack of “closure”, but I’m not so sure. I have been told many times over the years that I need to “have it out” with my family member. Have it out over what, I ask, and why? I remain convinced that it is not in my or my family’s interest to force a fight to death or disownment. I think that if I’m going to move forward, I’m going to have to do it on my own.

In the meantime, I don’t know what to do about this blog. Maintaining it is both satisfying and upsetting. I have to work hard to get the joy out, like the whole thing is a vat of olives pressed one too many times. 

Much of this sounds melodramatic and adolescent. I’ve tried to avoid that. It’s hard not to sound adolescent when all you want to do is whine that life is shit and it isn’t fucking fair. But it seems necessary to acknowledge this thing that is still happening to me, six months later. 

The truth is, I feel damaged. I am terrified that the damage may be irreparable.

At the time I was devastated, yet confident. Now I’m just tired. I’m fed up with politics and censorship and bad writing and family drama. I’ve had enough, and I’m pissed that this pain keeps hanging around and making me cry on warm nights.

Labels: Filed in Annoyance, Attacked, Out, Pain, Politics, Self-Awareness, Sydney | Comments (22)