A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

15. Books I Have Not Read

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Here’s what you should understand when you come asking me for advice on kinky books to read:

I haven’t read it.

Really. Whatever it is, I probably haven’t read more than three pages. Unless it is the Kushiel series or something written by Stephen Elliot. Or a scattered handful of Jay Wiseman books. So if you have been getting the impression that I know something about kinky erotica, consider this the unveiling.
I don’t read kinky books.

There are several reasons for this.

The first is that I didn’t learn about kink by reading instructional books; I learned about kink by going to Conversio Virium, seeing educational presentations, and learning through experience. I’m not knocking this learning style one way or the other. My exposure was simply a twist of advantage and geography.

And I still tend to not learn by reading; I always prefer to learn by watching, doing, fucking up, and trying again.

The second reason is that I am chronically resistant to instructional, self-help, or disseminated psychology books. I suspect this is a hold-over from my upbringing in a do-it-yourself, anti-therapy attitude. So I didn’t read the books that “explain” kink. I have a copy of Bound To Be Free…somewhere. I never got around to reading it. While it might have helped me at some point in my life, right now it simply doesn’t seem relevant.

As you may have noticed, I am perpetually self-analyzing. I usually see reading as a break from self-analysis. Books are my vacation.

The third reason is that I don’t read erotic fiction as literary fiction. So I have not read The Story of O. I have not read Tipping the Velvet. I have not read the Marketplace series. I have not read Venus in Furs. I don’t like to pay for it, I would never carry it around with me, and I’ve seen no compelling evidence, from the few pages of each of these texts that I’ve skimmed through, that I cannot find material just as good or better, for free, online.

I spend my money on kinky photography books. They are prettier to look at and deliver much more long-term satisfaction.

I used to think I owed it to the kinky community and myself to read these books, because they were so obviously an integral part of kink culture. Eventually I decided that this was a bad reason to read books, unless a day came that I was genuinely interested in their historical impact. That interest has not yet surfaced. Perhaps someday it will.

In the end, I prefer literary fiction. I don’t put my energy into long erotic fiction, because it is never, ever as fulfilling as reading good standard fiction. I prefer dense, classic epics; I read a lot of Hugo, Dumas, Austen, Rushdie, Marquez, Allende, Clavell. I went and bought a few new books recently: Eco, Borges, Kundera. And when I want a popcorn book, I reach for the sci-fi: Bradbury, Stephenson, Heinlein, Asimov.

The erotic fiction just doesn’t do it for me. The day someone writes a kinky erotic epic with the scale and scope of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I will die happy. I simply don’t see that day coming.

So I’ve been asked many, many times for my advice on kinky books. I will keep recommending
Elliot, because I respect his writing and appreciate the balance of erotic/non-erotic narrative in his work. But other than that, I’m at a loss. I’m not the right person to ask.

If you want to talk non-kinky books, I’d love to. Literature is one of the very few fields in which I genuinely identify as a geek.

But lest you think I know the specific reference behind the Story-of-O ring, let me set that record straight. I have absorbed the reference through cultural exposure. I have never read the book.

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.

Blogging For LGBT Families Day

Monday, June 2, 2008

This post is inspired by two things.

Thing the first: June 2nd is Blogging for LGBT Families Day, and as I happen to think “family” is an idea we each define on an individual basis, I’d say that raising awareness of the existing alternatives to the culturally traditional family structure qualifies as a good thing.

However, I am fried and ill and sneezing all over my computer screen. I’ve assured myself that this is wildly attractive. It is not, however, conducive to coherent thought.

Hence, thing the second: I wrote in the corner of a ratty black notebook this morning “Do something different and brave today.” Why did I write this? I am not in the habit of giving myself little inspirational notes. But in the spirit of that odd moment, here is something a little brave and a little different; a quick visit to another kind of writing. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. A poem. Feel free to cue instrumental music at your leisure.

This is a piece I’m working on for a chapbook-length collection of poetry on the idea of “Family.”

The Five Year Fix

An Irish girl and a bitter ex-Jewish young man move in together.
The first night their new phone rings,
and over the cracking snap of the bad connection
her brother paints a death threat on the young man’s face.
She’s got a family that doesn’t quit
and doesn’t want him around.
He’s got a great black hollow shaped like a childhood,
and another, smaller blue one shaped like a father.
They start hanging thick cocoon curtains that weekend.
She’s thinking marriage,
but it’s only the first week.

Two years later their electric coffee pot melts down,
And they go out for a late night cup.
She’s won something he was supposed to win,
and he pouts a bit over his dinner.
She gives him those deep Irish dimples and says
“At least it’s come into our family.”
He stops, puts his coffee cup down, and says,
“Oh.”
Breathy, like he’s had his heart vein flicked
by her fingernail.

Three years after that she’s back in school and he’s working.
Every night when his key rattles the door
she braces herself against the tile of the kitchen wall and thinks
Tonight’s the night he’ll leave me.
One Thursday he brings groceries home and kisses her cheek.
He says, “Hello,
Love of my life!
I forgot the smoked salmon, I’m sorry.”
And drops the bags on the floor to clench her tight, startled,
as she gulps, gasps, begins to cry.
She leaves a wet patch on his shoulder.
He strokes her hair softly, whispers he’s sorry, love,
please don’t cry, it’s only fish, we’ll be all right.

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?

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.

Protected: On The Rotation

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Just A Few Words

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Not an actual entry.

The following is the list of words (sans personal information such as some proper names) that I have taught my computer’s spell check to recognize over the past 3 years. I think it speaks for itself:

underbust overbust grommet autosodomized mackinac cunnilingus lube squick squicks Maymay Blaise femdom blogosphere dipshit safeword pansexual pansexuality Bornstein podcast cunt Milton polyamorous Conversio Virium tantra Philament transgender fictocritical

Oh, and Mac users can find this list by visiting their home folder -> Library -> Spelling, and opening the file “en” in the Text Edit application. I invite you all to see what you’ve been teaching your computers. Just don’t mess with the text once you’re in there. (And thanks to May for finding this information.)

Protected: When It Rains

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Graduate Level

Friday, December 7, 2007

So. I had been presented with two problems which, although intimately linked, I chose to deal with separately. These problems mirror consistent, resonant issues in alternative sexual communities of all kinds.

The first problem: Someone I love thought (thinks?) I’m immoral and sick, based upon what they’ve read and seen here in this blog.

The second problem: There is a possibility that my public words and actions will negatively affect my life, career, or personal safety.

Well, first things first.

I want to talk about why people attack us.

One of the comments on my previous post cited a religious irony. True, religious groups often attack alternative sexualities.

However, in my case this is not relevant. We are not a religious family. Perhaps because of this, perhaps because of other influences, my family member and I actually have similar attitudes on sex. The crux of our issues, it seems, focused specifically around the themes of pain, violence, and consent.

I knew I was not being attacked out of hatred. I knew, intellectually and viscerally, that I was embroiled in a troubled but loving relationship.

With the blog still down, I started pouring over the old entries. What does this look like to my family? I kept thinking. I started identifying problems.

My blog details my experiences with kink, and I’m aware that my experiences with kink are not par of the course for my age group. My blog relates episodes that evidence my preference to play hard and my skill in doing so.

I had a good conversation with Maja while I was going over these ideas. “I mean, yea,” she said, “Your blog’s pretty intense.”

“401 class?” I replied snarkily. “I have a graduate level kink blog?”

She laughed. “Right.”

When presented with the idea of abandoning kink, I said that it would never be an option. Why not? I literally dismissed the idea that I could give up being kinky without a second thought.

Would I have done that when I was just starting out? Where did that security come from?

An easy question. That security comes from six years of BDSM experience.

Six years of experience means that I’m writing from an assured, educated, well-rounded perspective. But it also means that I’m writing contextually from within that experience. This works perfectly if I assume that I have a sympathetic audience; the things I say are based within a common framework that kinky people share.

This means that the words I use have subtext. The events I write about have unseen protections. The ideas I present have history, and complex ramifications that I don’t always address.

As critical as I am of communicating without establishing appropriate subtexts, I have to admit I am a little ashamed of myself.

I know it would make a pretty story for me to come out and say I’ve risen above oppression by rejecting those who falsely accuse me, all in a blaze of righteousness and glory. But you know what? I won’t.

I do not think I was falsely accused. I think that if we’re going to go around assigning blame in this particular situation, some of it belongs to me.

We all use words without establishing their subtext, and it works for us because we’re familiar with the community that gives us cultural context. My blog exists within a vast network of other blogs and sites that speak on similar topics. My personal life plays out around hundreds of other people with similar ideas and interests.

Additionally, we assume that our blogs will be read by a self-selecting audience. Either this audience will have a genuine interest in our topics, or a genuine interest in us. Unfortunately, these two types of audience members don’t always intersect; our blogs are read by people who have no understanding of or sympathy with our topics, but who will continue reading (or censoring, or attacking) because they’ve taken an interest in us, personally. Family, friends, employers.

Most of us approach the process of information exchange from a modern, web-based perspective. Information is no longer presented to us in complete, self-sufficient volumes. Rather, we exchange information in small packets which link dynamically to other packets, creating the context upon which our ideas rest.

I hesitate to cite a generational influence here; I realize that I’m young within my own community. But it seems fair to say that where I see dynamic linking and packet exchange, my family member may see a single, isolated volume.

You, the people who read my blog, are under no obligation to read other blogs, nor to educate yourselves upon the history, issues, or best practices of BDSM. I think we have to acknowledge that dynamic, self-driven education will not always occur naturally, and is much less likely to occur when the reader is taking a personal interest in us, rather than in our topics.

This means that the people most in need of establishing a cultural context before judging us personally are, in fact, the people least likely to do so.

My family member read accounts of sadism and saw pictures of blood, and came to the same conclusions I might come to if presented with such things independently. Independently, some of the things we do and say are scary as hell.

It seemed, as I had suspected, that my initial impulse would become my plan of action.

Initially my instinct was that I would continue writing, do some hard thinking on what I say and how I say it, and in the meantime try to open a dialogue with my family member that might allow them to put my 401 graduate level blog within a framework of elementary knowledge.

I would prove myself sane, not by backing down or changing myself, but by changing the way I present myself.

This is an easy resolution to make, but hard to carry through. I couldn’t bring myself to make such an awkward phone call. I began writing a very long, very passionate letter. I asked people around me to recommend books and resources, and debated how to send them. With a little note? With my letter? Briefly I flirted with the idea of giving the books as Christmas gifts, but rejected that as cruel and melodramatic.

Why did I (do I) assume that my family member would want to be educated? Doesn’t that seem presumptuous?

When I started writing and exploring my sexuality, I did very little to hide my interests or activities from my family. I saw my actions, my development and beliefs, and took pride in them. I assumed that my family, similar in their basic principles and sharing my inquiring mind, would come to the same conclusions.

This assumption turned out to be wrong, with shattering results. I forgot that one crucial piece of the equation: that the assumption was based on information we didn’t share.

But the inquiring minds remain. I have faith in inquiring minds.

I had begun to examine the situation within the baseline of a loving, troubled relationship. Again, it came to my rescue.

They emailed me, a single line: “I love you.” The lines of communication were open.

Coochie Snorcher

Monday, October 22, 2007

Did you ever play the penis game when you were growing up? The boys in my high school used to play it in math class, and I remember thinking how weird it was that they’d use a part of themselves as a dirty, funny word.

I will never be a good erotica writer. I get annoyed with the euphemisms, I’m sick of the crashing oceans. I’m fed up with the metaphor, the impossible dance to balance the delicate with the raw. I’ve had terms churning up in my mind for weeks now, full of frustration.

I simply do not like any of the words we have in this language to refer to our genitalia. And you must admit, erotica does generally contain genitalia. It’s the nature of the two-backed beast.

This is what I do with my time. I sit around and try to figure out why I don’t like words.

I’ll start with the obvious. The technical terms, if you will.

Vagina & Penis

The Vagina Monologues really nailed the word “vagina” right on the nose:

“It sounds like an infection at best, maybe a medical instrument: ‘Hurry nurse, bring me the vagina!’”

Seriously, that is one awkward conflux of sounds. The “v” comes humming off the tongue nicely only to be brought up squeaking short by the high-pitched vowels. It’s not a word I’d like to run my tongue over; it actually sounds distasteful. Clinical.

“Penis” isn’t really doing much better. Pee-niss. The onomatopoeia of the word “penis” is not sex; it’s urine. I realize that’s right on the nose for some, but I am not quite happy that one of the most inevitable words in sexual language is screaming piss play in my face. A sterile, yellow fluid for a sterile, yellow word.

Insert and remove the penis from the vagina, ensuring a sufficient amount of lubrication has saturated the area to allow for fluid motion. Repeat until climax.

Yes, that’s definitely how I want to spend my nights.

Our vaginas and penises are pretty much the only body parts we still consistently use euphemisms for. We’ve grown past the tightly buttoned morality of the Victorian era that danced around chicken breasts and table legs, but we’re still in a culture where it’s just not okay to admit to sex out loud. Our sexual organs are swearwords.

And the euphemisms are even worse, which goes against the very definition of what a euphemism is supposed to be.

There are, of course, the obvious choices.

Cock & Pussy

What am I, keeping a farm now?

I really don’t get the word “pussy.” It’s a bit squelchy, in the end. I feel as though this word got picked up to mean “vagina” because no one could think of a better option. I have no ownership of the word. The area between my legs, although hairy and soft, does not seem adequately represented by the word “pussy.” This edges into the nonsensical for me, a combination of baby talk and misplaced modesty.

The word is far more illuminating in its derogatory use: don’t be a pussy. Don’t be a wimp. Don’t be passive. Pussy is a swearword of weakness and impotence. Isn’t that just fantastic; we’ve managed to make the word we use for a women’s genitals simultaneously dirty and weak. I can’t really avoid that when I say the word pussy. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

“Cock” is a word that I’m warily all right with. It sounds arrogant and hard and clever. But it is undeniably a bit blunt for some situations. The language forces my hand, the very rhythm of the word like a loud misplaced drumbeat in a quieter symphony. I ran my fingertips gently along his cock.

It’s like a linguistic game: one of these words is not like the others, one of these words is not like its brothers.

Cunt.

Here’s the thing about the word cunt. I actually like it; that’s right, I like it. Its vulgarity and abruptness make it a natural complement for the word “cock.” They sound nice together, an aggressive shoulder-to-shoulder brawling clash of sounds. Cock. Cunt. They are hard, fast sounds, and they work for hard, fast sex.

Cunt. Cock. Fuck. Cunt. Cock. Fuck. Them’s fighting words. Thrusting words.

But “cunt” is also a political word. It holds multiple spaces in my consciousness; a word of female power, a word of reclamation, the word so dirty I didn’t even know it existed because no one dared to use it. A violent word, a feminist word. It is politically charged in ways that my sex is not.

Also, my sex is not always the thrusting rhythm of cunt-cock-fuck sex. This is the battle between technical and vulgar; no matter what words I choose I cannot escape being one or the other, unless I just want to be funny.

So those are my choices: technical, vulgar, or funny. That’s what sex comes down to.

Really, it’s all downhill from here.

Dick.

Horrible sound. “Dick” has all of the shortness of “cock” but none of the flavor. Also, similar to “johnson,” I really cannot get past the fact that this is a name. I don’t name my vagina. I don’t want to name your penis. It’s not a pet, for fuck’s sake.

Organ. (See also: manhood, member.)

What organ? His liver? Am I having a tender tryst with the man’s kidneys?

These words are like having sex through a hole in a bed sheet; distant and full of deniability. Words of coming of age stories and exclusive clubs that I clearly cannot join. In my head these words ring of the historical distaste that made women out as incomplete men. I have organs aplenty, but not the one that counts. My womanhood is innocuous and outdated, and as for membership, well, you get the picture.

Cooch.

No. Just . . . no. I give up on this one. I have no idea how people can stand to even say this out loud. It feels like sandpaper on my tongue.

From here we devolve into the obscure and the outrageous. I cannot create my own euphemisms to use in my erotic writing, precisely because they would be meaningless. Meaningless words are the least sexy of all; they are simply baby talk. Often reading erotica with made-up words makes me feel as though I’ve stumbled into a game of dirty Mad-Libs.

I get that some of us have moved beyond these hang-ups, although clearly I have not. I can talk about almost everything; I spent the beginning of Friday night regaling a complete stranger with my opinions on dildoes. I can talk about sex. And yet I feel hemmed in by these terms: cock, pussy, cunt, penis. I don’t like how they sit on the page. I don’t like that our sexual organs are weighted with such unsexy language.

I mean, coochie snorcher? What the hell?

A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

15. Books I Have Not Read

10. Vanilla

Blogging For LGBT Families Day

How To Write Porn For Me

The Pen Is The Tongue Of The Mind

Protected: On The Rotation

Just A Few Words

Protected: When It Rains

Graduate Level

Coochie Snorcher

My Secret Identity

Search

Public Service Declarations

Let's Talk About

Tweet Tweet…

Past Wanderings

Blogroll

Goings On In NYC

Tag, You're It

Copyright ©2008