Fact or Fiction: Binary Opposites

Yeah, I know. Where's the next chapter? It's coming, I assure you. But in the meantime, I wanted to discuss a subject that has come up so often in emails to me, and comments from readers and writers of erotica, that I feel the need to address it publicly. "Are your stories fact or fiction?" "Do you base your stories on your own experiences?" "Have you done the things you write about in your stories?" I could list more of these types of questions, but it would get boring and serve no purpose. The essence of the question is always the same: is this fact or fiction or fiction based on fact? Underlying this question is the belief that the contents of the text would have far more legitimacy if they were "true". First, I dispute the concept of "true". I don't know what it is, really. Secondly, why is it that if something is born in the imagination of the writer, and transformed by the imagination of the reader, it is automatically "untrue"? As a writer, I dispute the legitimacy of truth. I dispute it's ability to inform us or educated us to any greater extent that fiction does. In fact, I would say that because of the natural hiccups and farts of the temporal world, reality is often too fragmented and compromised to give us any real sense of what is going on. In fiction, we are allowed to draw out the moment, the word, the caress, the look, and examine it at our leisure. If, in reality, a train pulled into the station, or it started to rain, or someone stepped in front of the character we were observing, our examination would be over. But in fiction the train need never come, the rain need never start, and the observer and the observed could be the only two people in the universe. There is time aplenty in fiction to find out the truth. The supremacy, authority, and legitimacy of truth has been entrenched into our culture by the academy and sciences. I'm not saying for a moment that the pursuits of the denizens of those ivory towered enclaves don't have their place. They do. It just isn't the only place. Here - on the electronic page - you and I weave another "truth". I write, you read, I propose visions of reality, you manipulate them with all the experiences you bring to the reading. When our visions are divergent enough, you'll often post a comment and say so. I read it and realize that my vision is not universal; it teaches me over and over again that I don't own the meaning of the stories I write once I've posted them on here. In fact, the more I anticipate your reading, the less I feel that I ever owned the meaning at all - even as I write it. This is a wonderful feeling: I kick off into an existential place where none of us are either right or wrong. We are all making meaning, threads spooling out into a sometimes turbulent, sometimes gentle sea. Sometimes we braid, sometimes we snag and tangle and sometimes those threads never touch each other at all - never meet. But we are inseperable in our acts of sculpting new truths and we have all the time in the world, and as few or as many distractions as we want, in which to do it. Hugs, mm p.s. sometimes, I miss you.

Voice - Navigation

You know, when I start writing something and get really excited, I end up forgetting that it is a pain in the ass to navigate or to know if new chapters have been posted. The initial post of Voice was 10 parts - and I've added another 4 VOICE Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen

Voice

I've been working on a non-consentual story in my head for some time. I envisioned this differently than I usually do. It seemed to be something that should read on a page. So each of the parts is fairly short, but it was important to separate them. This means that some pages are very short indeed, but the point of view changes, and so it was necessary. Read: Voice Or, you can navigate the chapters by going to the Series Page

Just wonderful Silliness

Okay, I know, you are going to read this and think...what the fuck? But I had to share this with you because I love you (I do, you know) and found it incredibly funny. One of the members of the ERWA writer's list, Grey Mouser, gave this definition of diplomacy: Diplomacy is the fine art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Yup, that was it. I just had to share.

Non-Consensual Erotica

It's been on my mind for a while now to write a long non-consensual piece. I've been trying to define what makes a story like that erotic for me. There is the danger, of course, which is exciting. One of the main problems with good erotica is putting enough peril into a story, without making it so distracting that you stop feeling the "erotic". Some people get off on a great deal of peril, some not so much. For most of my stories, the peril is internal, emotional, but on occassion, like with Gaijin, the peril is more real. It's a fine line for me. I don't find actually horror very erotic - but a smidgeon of terror - oh, yes. Being forced to feel arousal is something I find erotically intriguing. I lay the blame for this at the door of my Judeo-Christian upbringing. I think that, sometimes subconsciously, a lot of men and women feel this way too. I've noticed from time to time, reading male-penned erotica that has an interesting "shucks, it wasn't my fault - I can't help myself" element to it. Sexist to say so, but I actually don't find that very erotic at all. Why will I tolerate it if the MC is female but not male? Hmmm... you can see my deeply seated cultural bias coming to the fore! So...non-con. Hate it? Love it? And why?

Just a Great Article link

Not much time to muse about anything today. However, I just finished reading a brilliant essay by Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, The Watchmen, The Lost Girls) on pornography and its role in the development of western civilization. Sounds a little boring. Please, don't let it. Here's a quote from the article: An ingenious array of 'medical' devices was produced, for instance, to protect the vulnerable youngster from unwelcome incidents of bodily arousal such as those, say, which occur to adolescent boys when they’re asleep. While the boy's hands would obviously be strapped securely to the headboard to prevent deliberate acts of masturbation, this did not prevent him from becoming sexually aroused while sleeping, possibly while dreaming, which was clearly a quite unacceptable state of affairs in century's-end Germany. To solve this problem somebody devised a ring with sharp spikes set around the inside surface, that could be placed comfortably around a detumescent penis but which would impale it if the organ happened to expand for any reason. Very popular with parents of small boys in early twentieth century Germany and Austria, apparently, this form of Sadeian sexual torture during childhood would produce the famously well-balanced generation of young Übermenschen that counted noted sexual deviant Adolf Hitler in its ranks. BOG VENUS VERSUS NAZI COCK-RING: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography, Alan Moore.

In Response to Tom Paine's Comment

Tom, of Polyamourously Perverse left a comment on my last post. It deserved an answer, but there's just not enough room on that damn little pop-up - and I have a big response: Tom Paine said... As the father of two daughters, I cannot imagine, much less want to write, fiction that has even a hint of incest to it, though I know that violating taboos is part of the kick in erotica. This is a visceral reaction, but an honest, from the heart one. And I knew, even before I started typing that some readers would have this reaction. Nonetheless, I wrote it. Because I write as much for myself, as I do for others. I think that writers have an obligation to go to uncomfortable places. Not this particular place necessarily, but some place where they have to really war with themselves to get the story out onto paper. One of the reasons that I think this is important, not just for writers, but for society, is that not dealing with subject matter one finds distasteful tends to suggest that that matter simply doesn't exist. For most people, that won't matter, but for the few - like me - who have a deep dark "Daddy" thing, the fact that no one will mention it, that no one will talk about it, leaves us feeling like lepers. I didn't write it to validate the feelings. I wrote it simply to acknowledge them. From my own feelings, and the women I know who have this particular kink, the subject is, ironically, not actually related to incest at all. This is very much the case for 'rape fantasies' also. Very few women actually fantasize about real rape. However, we use society's constructs (father/daughter relationships, rape scenarios) to frame the fantasies because they are iconic, and bear some relation (the iconography, not the actual fact) to what we fantasize about. Freud who, although much maligned, was pretty damn insightful about human sexual development, would say: of course, all girls are in love with their fathers, and all boys with their mothers, and that reaching maturity is when you move away from those love bonds, and toward the "other" - loving someone else. But left behind for some of us are the remnants of certain aspects of those relationships that we never really encounter in our more mature entanglings: unconditional love, unconditional trust, a sense of guided innocence and discovery within the safely of that primordial family. For most women who have "Daddy" things, the father figure is not THEIR FATHER. He's a construct of fatherliness - a father figure. It doesn't have anything to do with contravening the non-sexual bond between them and their own father. It's about seeking "fatherly" qualities in others - and reverting to that state of trust and innocence that most of us have lost with time, and the errosive effect of everyday adult life. We don't have a word for men like this, without referring to Fathers. We could say "Paternal", I guess. But sexuality being what it is, we tend in times of great eroticism to revert to the simple thing that comes closest - Daddy. I'm going to bring a shitload of pain down on my head for this, but I would venture to guess that for a lot of submissives, this paternal figure is exactly what they seek in a dom. However D/s and BDSM have carved out new icons - new labels for these figures: Dominant, Master, etc. to construct a new paradigm by which these aspects might be represented. But I maintain that a great many of the qualities that a sub seeks in a dom are exactly what women who have "Daddy" fantasies seek in that constructed father figure. So... why write about it. I wrote about it because it was hard to do. I wanted to examine the fetish and tease out the truths from the shock value. Does the tabooness add to the erotic value? Undoubtedly. But at it's core, a fetish - like any other piece of text (in the semiotic sense) is made up of a signifier and a signified. The signifier is "Daddy", but the signified is not the biological father, but rather qualities that can be associated with him, as I said before: unconditiional love, unconditional trust, a bearer of the burden of responsibility for what transpires. The reality is that some women DO have this fetish. I do. And although I might intellectualize it ad nauseum, I'm still a product of my culture; I'm still mortified by the spectre of this taboo; I would never, could never, do what the protagonist in my story does - tell a lover. And it's that silence that interests me. And that's why I write about it.

Writing past the comfort zone - and the convenience of housework

As I mentioned in my previous post, the challenge was to write something outside my comfort zone. Yeah, the Daddy thing is really hot for me. Hot and very, very scary. I've danced around the issue, writing-wise for a couple of years. From time to time I've tried to understand the pschology of it. Why is it hot for me. My characters in the story skate around the issue too. What's funny about the experience of making yourself sit down and write about something you're so hideously uncomfortable about is that you find all sorts of strategies for getting out of writing it. Just after the end of the first scene, I had the overwhelming desire - pathalogical, in fact - to do ANYTHING other than write on. I actually got up from my computer and spent two hours on my knees in the bathroom scrubbing the floor with a scrubbrush. How Freudian is that!?! It's bloody psychoanalysis 101! After standing up and surveying the gleaming white tiles. I managed to make myself go back and finish the story. But for a moment there I felt like the midget clairvoyant in "Poltergeist". I got this insane look on my face and said, out loud to my cat: "I declare this bathroom CLEAN". It doesn't matter how well I think you know myself, or how reflective I am. From time to time I just go into total agonistic behaviour mode and surprise myself. Fuck, sometimes, I'm just wierd.

Better Left Unsaid

This story came about as a challenge from Slo Kiss. Write about something sexual you are really uncomfortable about. So I did - this is it. Better Left Unsaid He has that look, you know, that perfect everything-in-the-right place look: the suit, the steel-rimmed glasses, the conservative tie, the neatly trimmed moustache, the gray, receding hairline and the slight paunch. Sitting next to him at the dentist's office, unable to concentrate on the magazine in my lap, yearning for some distraction from my mortal trepidation about dental work, I look at his legs - crossed, slightly meaty thighs, neatly encased in dark grey worsted. I lean over, until my mouth is an inch or so from his ear and whisper, "Fuck me, Daddy." Continue reading Better Left Unsaid.

Meanwhile, out there...

I just haven't had a solid minute to myself to write anything. Last weekend was theme weekend on ERWA - the theme for May is "Encounters on the Edge" so don't forget to go visit the gallery because there are two really yummy stories that will be posted. But, I was roaming around the net, saying hello to old friends and ran across a link on Soulless' Black as My Soul site. If you like history, or mythology, you are going to LOVE Sexual Fables. The very talented, very clever Martin Blythe's "Sexual Fables offers an alternative history of Western arts and literature". He reinterprets everything from the goings on in the garden of Eden, to Georges Sand as carnivorous beastie and more. It's just a delightful read and there's lots and lots of it. I wrote him to say how much I enjoyed his site, and he very kindly wrote me back. Now, how am I going to persuade him that it's time he started writing erotica? I have a feeling he thinks it's beneath him, but actually, erotica needs writers who are willing to put the kind of research time into their fiction that he does. And anyway, it's only beneath him if he insists on staying in the missionary position *grin* rg

Good Lord, I've been tagged!

Tom Paine, from Polyamourously Perverse tagged me with this lovely award for making him think. Ideally, I would have liked to be awarded something for making people wank, but thinking is not bad either... and it usually leads to it anyway. Of course, this means I have to think of 5 bloggers who do the same for me. ONLY FIVE! And it's not really done to tag someone back. I must spread the love onwards. - Sadistic Excess It's only right I should mention Daemon, because I just blogged a whole slew in reaction to his latest blog story. He certainly made me think! We often disagree, and have little prickly net dances around each other, but he does make me think a lot. - Real Adult Sex Figleaf always makes me think. A humanist with a sense of humour, and a good eye for disecting the seemingly mundane and showing me something rather wonderful beneath it. - Pretty Dumb Things Chelsea Girl has probably been given a lot of awards and doesn't need any from me. But she definitely makes me think, interspersed with making me horny. - Confessions of an English Gentleman I find Roper's "Snapshots, real and imagined" make me think a great deal. It's not always in a very deep way - but often in a very wet one. - Eros, Logos O can always be trusted to not only make me think, but extend my vocabulary considerably. There were a lot more people I would have loved to have tagged.