One of my favourite things: Shunga

I've been thinking about using my blog, from time to time, like a Pillow Book - a list of my favourite things. So, this weekend I thought I'd introduce you to one of my very favourite things: Shunga (click here for a full wikipedia definition). Shunga is Japanese erotic art. The first shunga prints began emerging in the eleventh century. Their purpose is to excite - to stimulate the sexual appetite of the viewer. That is not to say that they have no artistic or symbolic value. Far from it. At the height of the Edo period, famous Japanese woodblock print makers produced shunga as part of their repetoire. The first time I ever saw a piece of shunga, I was around twelve. My parents had a coffee table book of asian art history, and I found a single, tantalizing print. At the time, it kind of scared me. The genitals of both the male and the female were HUGE. And the people seemed, to my childish eyes, ugly or angry or... I don't know. It is a common misconception that the genitals are painted so large in shunga drawings as a kind of boasting, or as a fantasization of the act. This isn't the case at all. The artists are using a kind of 'zoom' technique. They make the genitals so large, so that the details of the genitals are clearly seen, in order to arouse the viewer. I think that one of the lasting effects of such an early exposure to shunga, for me, is that I still find the idea of having sex with clothes on incredibly arousing. The idea of only having naked what needs to be naked in order to fuck is..oh, GOD! Fucking hot, for me. The other thing I adore about shunga is the way, as opposed to a lot of western erotica, the subjects seem so cosy and warm, and totally engaged in the act in the most wonderfully comfortable of ways. Everyone seems so...gorgeously at ease. What I love about shunga are the little details. The folds of the robes often echo the folds of skin of the cunt or the shapes of cocks. In the room surrounding the subjects, all sorts of things are scattered: poetry, sake cups, fans, scrolls, pillows, hair combs. It reminds me so much of someone's modern messy bedroom - when you're in the first flush of a new relationship, and you just don't give a damn about the mess - you're too busy fucking. Finally, I love the ecstacy. It's not Western porn, glossy-lipped pseudo ecstacy. It's the real kind of amazing bliss that contorts the features and turns them almost ugly. That intensity of pleasure. I realize that it's a bit hard to translate the expressions - because every culture has its own conventions, but here's a hint: a woman represented as biting a handkerchief or piece of clothing is deep in the throes of erotic ecstacy. I'm thinking of making a screensaver of some of my shunga collection. Let me know if you'd like a copy. (Definitely NOT worksafe)

Sexual Jealousy & Writers as Moral Educators

One of the things I really love about having a blog is getting comments - they often make me think much more deeply about an issue than I have before. An anonymous commenter left this comment regarding my posting of Chapter 9 of The Dinner Party. how can one not be sexually jealous and why is it seen as a progress? It made me think about myself and my own attitudes regarding sexual jealousy. It also made me think about how many readers assume the moral stances of my characters are always my own. To the first question then:"How can one not be sexually jealous?" On an utterly personal and emotional level, I don't understand how people CAN be sexually jealous. I can understand it intellectually - I know many, many people who are. And I've seen the very genuine pain that suffering from sexual jealousy can cause. But I can't really understand it on an emotional level, because I've never felt it. I'm perceptive enough to realize that the total absence of a capacity to be sexually jealous is uncommon. But, perhaps because of my inability to feel a kinship with those who are sexually jealous, I seldom write characters who are. It's just not an emotional state I understand well enough to feel competent writing about. That being said, I do know it would be a disasterous thing to have a relationship with someone who was sexually jealous, and I've been quite particular all my life not to pretended an understanding or, for that matter, a tollerance of it. I am, at the very core of my being, unmonogamous. I can't possibly promise not to have sex with someone else - I can only promise to be honest about it. For all that, ironically, I'm extremely unpromiscuous. Emotional jealousy is something completely different. I have been - and I understand the emotion. I guess I simply percieve the emotional loyalty of a lover as being very different from their physical exclusivity. I've never equated love with sex, I've never even thought they were related, other than in the sense of it being a convenience if you happen to enjoy fucking the person you're in love with. But I've been deeply in love with people and never slept with them. And, of course, the reverse it true too. I guess my answer to the question (and I realize this might sound a little cold) is: How CAN you be sexually jealous. I know people are, I just don't understand why. I might adore having sex with someone, but that doesn't give me any right at all to tell them what to do with their body. I have no ownership over it - so the idea of sexual jealousy seems absurd to me. The other half of the question is much easier: "why is it seen as a progress?" It's not. Certainly I don't represent it as being "progress". It is a big mistake to assume that the morality of my characters is my own - very often it isn't. In fact, one of the reasons I write is to explore the intellectual and emotional ramifications of a moral stance that is not my own. I find it a very good way to look at other point of view and, not only analyze them, but attempt to engage with them on an emotional, individual level. In this particular case, the character in question is Gilles. I've met men like Gilles and they intrigue me particularly because they are so absolutely different from me. It is a fascinating thing to write a character so alien to one's own nature. I can only hope I do it with some skill. Beyond the specifics of both these questions, is the sense that my stories should, in any way, change someone's mind or moral stance about something. I'm not a preacher. I don't write sermons. And, if I'm writing well, I don't moralize. I leave that up to people who feel qualified to do it. I just write fiction. I write "what ifs". And that, by it's very nature, is utterly morally ambiguous. I don't believe that writers have an obligation to be moral educators. I doubt very much whether anyone ever asked Agatha Christie why she felt that murder was acceptable. Just because she wrote characters who were murderers, doesn't mean she thought that she was a proponent of murder. In fact, I gather, quite the opposite. I wonder why erotica writers are held to higher moral standards? ;-)

Writing like a Man

Some of you might have noticed that the last chapter of The Dinner Party is written in Gilles' POV. Although I have written in a male voice before, I'm not terribly confident about it. Or rather, let me rephrase that, I can write certain men very well - because they are voices I have grown up with - and others, I'm less familiar with. I don't know a lot of dominant men. Actually, and very ironically, I haven't met a lot of dominant men I like enough to really sit and listen to - and you must do that, intently, to get someone's 'voice' internalized enough to write it. There are a couple of dominant men in blogland that I do like very much, but very few in real life. Usually, ironically, it's often their politics that drive me away. It really doesn't matter how attracted I am to someone, if I hate their politics, I just can't see past it. Which, of course, leaves me with a permanent dilemma on a personal level, doesn't it? Oh well, that's not what I was writing about. What I really wanted to say was, I've been trying to read some fiction written by dominant men in order to get try and get the 'tone' I want. This isn't a problem when I'm writing dominants who aren't the main characters, but in the case of Gilles - I need that proximity - that internal voice: rational, extremely analytical, but very also very driven. The paradox of this is that, most dominants aren't very chatty. And in the case of the ones I have been with, it was always the tangible separation, the mental barrier I couldn't see behind that made them so attractive to me in the first place. I find it very easy to 'read' people. It's the ones who I can't read that most intrigue me. Daemon (I just read that he prefers D or Dae in his 100 things, but formality on the web being what it is, I'm going to stick to the formal), has been writing a serial story called Excess. It is very edgy erotica, but if you like that - and I do - then you will really enjoy this. He has written quite a few other, quite wonderful stories and they are all worth reading. This one, however, is not really fiction. I'm still not completely sure what disturbed me so much about it. Certainly not the writing itself which is some of the best he's ever done. I found it incredibly hard to get any distance from it. That, in itself, is something of a compliment; it is rare that I get so involved in a story that I can't step back and look at the devices that have gone into making it. The story is well-titled, and beyond the details of it (I won't spoil it for you - read it) or rather, underneath them, is a terrible and vast sea of something I can't quite explain. It is that thing - that vast thing beneath - that is what I find disturbing. It took me back to images of my father in one of his awful tempers. When I was young, the whole house used to cower under them - not because he was ever violent really, but because it was so very caustic. It would fill the whole house with the emotional equivalent of mustard gas. When I got older, and I rejected him, I learned to recognize that propensity for anger in other men and, when I saw it, I would cut them dead. I was not interested in healing it or trying to make it better for them, and I'd made a conscious decision never to dance on the end of that particular string again. But I never really got to understand the dimensions of that kind of man either - because in fleeing from where ever I saw it, I never really took the measure of it either. You can't ever understand what you refuse to get close to. And yet, in all truth, the fear of it still forms you - doesn't it? I can't say that I've changed. I still reject that sort of manipulation in the real world and I don't think my dislike of it will ever allow me to examine it at close quarters, but a story like Excess kind of bridges the gap.

The Dinner Party - Part 9

In the back of his car, Gilles Massé watched his latest acquisition's face as he caught her nipple between his first and second fingers and squeezed. The whimper she emitted was a satisfying combination of pain and need. Carmen, his beloved, his wife, his partner in crime, had her hand up the girl's dress; he could smell the girl's cunt and hear how wet she was. So full of illusions, this one, so full of desire: it made his cock ache. Read The Dinner Party - Chapter 9

The Dinner Party - Part 8

As promised, a new installment of The Dinner Party. But you didn't seem all that enthusiastic on Sunday, sweetheart. In fact, I was kind of wondering if my best friend wasn't actually a spy for the moral majority." "I changed my mind." "You slut!" he hissed, sotto voce. Isabel smiled serenely. "Look... I'm entering the lion's den here. Just..." "Just what?" "If I start acting weird, tell me. Okay? Just keep an eye on me?" David's smile broadened and he wiped away a fake tear. "Oh, my little girl is growing up." "Seriously, David. I mean it. If I get...lost. Promise me you'll come and find me? Read The Dinner Party - Chapter 8

Erotic Story Site

I just noticed that one of my fellow ERWA writers has a huge archive of erotica stories. Some of these are written by G. Gregory, and some by other very well known writers, such has Helena Settimana. Have a visit to G. Gregory's MyErotica Also - another installment of the Dinner Party - coming up soon.

Yeah, Verily I say unto thee

I know I don't usually do this, but this was a delightful piece of silliness in the Washington Post: And Thy Servant, Candi, Shall Cleave Unto Thee Tuesday, March 20, 2007; Page C01 -- Frank Ahrens Hooters announced yesterday that it will open its first restaurant in Israel this year in Tel Aviv. This sign of the End Times was foretold thousands of years ago in a little-known addendum to the final book of the New Testament: Rev. 23: 1-4 {+1}And from the West came a harlot She-Beast bearing plates of strange food: fried rings of onion and wings of bison. {+2}And, verily I say unto thee, there also was in that place beer. {+3}And the She-Beast had the eyes of a great owl that were painted with blue, and flaxen yellow hair that moved not when she did. {+4}And the men of Judea stood in the shadow of the great She-Beast's bosom and tried to get her number.

Virginity and Power

I realize this is a strange title for a post, but my last short story, "Not About Flowers," brought up some controversy. This was a bit of a shock to me because, although I don't write anything really 'light', it was one of my lighter pieces. It was certainly one of my less explicit ones. It was also, in retrospect, one of the most feminist pieces I've ever written. After reading a piece about virginity on my writers list, I got thinking about it: what is the value of it, and who sets its value. Historically, (an no offence to all you gents out there) its value has been set by men. It has also been deeply bound up in inheritance and bloodlines. A male, impregnating a virgin, can be assured that it is his DNA and no other that carries on. It also speaks to the idea of a woman's body being chattel. A woman in Western society, and in others too, was the property of her father, until, breaking the seal at the consumation of the marriage, she belonged to her husband. So virginity has iconic power - it has become the signifier for all sorts of things: purity, newness, ownership, family honour, moral rectitude. Culturally, of course, the value of virginity has been set often by religions. With the virgin Mary being the poster child of the Catholic church - an icon of everything that is good and true and selfless. Where I live, it is the mark of innocence. Women here will go to tremendous lengths to preserve it and, if that is not possible, reconstitute it. There's a doctor in town who sews up hymens for $500 a go. He's got a three month waiting list. Uglier even is the pervasive misbelief in Asia that deflowering a virgin will cleanse a man of the HIV virus. (Yeah, I recommend you don't dwell on that one too much or it will make you furious). The feminists of the last century, in an effort to protect women from the rather ugly commercial aspects of the value of virginity, have downplayed its importance to practically nothing. Hymen, no hymen, who cares? How can a woman's value be judged by such an insignificant thing? And furthermore, most girls break it during strenuous exercise...so, it's all but a myth. What I wanted to explore was the individual. Mostly because I wanted to argue against the general. If virginity is a thing owned by individuals, then who but that individual has the right to state its value? Moreover, who but that individual has the right to determine what should be done with it? What I wanted to propose is that, if virginity is the lock, then perhaps the key should be desire. Who takes it is not as important as the conditions under which is is given. The male, regardless of what he thinks - or whether he thinks a gift of some value is being given to him - is only important in so much as he can elict the desire necessary. And so, the man in number 17 is, in himself, unimportant. The words he writes and the desire that they engender in Leonora are what counts; she feels enough desire to embark on that journey into the erotic life. Anyway, I'm not suggesting any of this should be taken as gospel. As Barthes said, "The death of the author is the birth of the reader," and it is each reader who has the right to determine meaning in the story now. But, you know me, I like to mull things over here. Read it and tell me what you think: Not About Flowers

Not About Flowers

I can't say that the survey results affected me greatly, but it did tempt me to try a couple of things I've never consciously decided to write before. I was interested in how many people selected romantic erotica as their favourite type. So, I have had a go at writing it. Specifically, about virgins. Remember when you were one? Please note that this story has very little explicit sex in it. Read: Not About Flowers Your comments are much appreciated. * * * * Please note - link now corrected and a thousand apologies * * *

The Old Character Description Dilemma

For any of you who have bothered to take a look at my survey results, you may have been as surprised as I was to find that almost 30% of my readers are men. This actually DID surprise me. I was always under the impression that it was a lot lower. It's happy news for me. I never wanted or set out to write for just one gender, but I did think, perhaps, that because so many of my MC's were women, men might not be so interested. However, now that I know... I'm a little worried about how little description I give to my main characters. I was working on the premise that women like to imagine themselves in the shoes of the main character while they read, and that too detailed a description of the woman might effectively "shut them out" of that experience. But men, who are reading from an observational point of view might like a more extensively described woman... What do you think? Any opinions on this?

Delays and Apologies

I can hear you thinking...yeah, yeah, yeah! Just shut up and write something new. I will, I promise. Life is just getting in the way at the moment - in a BIG way. Meanwhile, for those of you who were interested to see the results of my survey click on the link below The Who Reads Erotica Survey Results Hugs, I miss you. rg

Who am I writing for?

Seems like a silly question, doesn't it? But, running across this essay question in one of my Master's courses, you know...I couldn't answer it. I think erotica writers make all sorts of assumptions about who actually reads their work; there are a lot of generalizations. But the question struck me as a good one. Who am I writing for? And, if I knew, would it affect what I wrote? The problem is, I can't answer either question because, in truth, I don't know who you are at all. But I would like to know you a whole lot better. *grin* And I think it would turn me on immensely to have a clearer picture of who is reading my stories. So...will you take this survey for me? I know that surveys are a pain in the ass, but it's completely anonymous and the data will only be used to write my essay for my course - and perhaps inspire me the next time I sit down to write something filthy :-) I'd really appreciate it if you'd fill it out. Don't feel you have to answer any questions that you are uncomfortable with: Please take the survey by clicking here.

Hell Week

For reasons I won't bore you with, getting back from holiday, this has been hell week for me. No time to write or play or anything. However, in my new capacity as Theme Story editor over on ERWA, there are a few stories on this month's site that are really worth reading. For great historical erotica (not bodice buster stuff - more like "Caleb Carr gets explicit"), do yourself a favour and read "An Excess of Light" by Robert Buckley. For funny, quirkly, totally noirotica, read The Russian Double by William Penrose. A classier story. in a more modern Murder Mytery genre (Murderotica - hehe), is Torn In Two by Alicia Night Orchid. Finally, I have no idea why this particular story made me so horny, but see what you think: A Life of Service by J.T. Benjamin.