Write Sex Week: Day Two

by Felix Baron (Nexus)

Lusty Ladies, on behalf of your myriad fans, I salute you! You deserve our fullest respect for the many benefits that you bestow upon this world. You start with nothing but your sweet sensuousness and well-honed skills and create publishable novels. That’s magic!

Consider, if one of your books sells 5,000 copies and it takes three hours to read, and it’s read only twice per copy, that’s a total of 30,000 hours of pleasure that you are responsible for. That’s 1,250 days, or almost three and a half years. Incredible?

It was Nexus editor, Peter Darvil-Evans, who told me, ‘We publish books for one-handed readers.’ I think it’s safe to assume that each reading of your novel brings about at least two orgasms. I’m including those resulting from the readers’ busy fingers, while reading; those that come later, from the fantasies that the book inspires, and those that are results of your work moving its readers to seek out their lovers for their mutual pleasure. (Two-for-one.) That’s about 10,000 orgasms induced by every novel you write! Most people don’t stimulate anywhere near that many in other people in an entire lifetime. That’s an achievement to be proud of!

Further, you ladies are educators. How many people, I wonder, first learned to locate and appreciate the clitoris or the G-spot from reading sexy fiction? Those revelations can be life-changing. I’ve heard of young women who suffered unslaked lust to their early twenties, or sometimes beyond, because neither they nor their partners knew which cute little pink buttons to push, to induce la petite morte. You’ve saved relationships. You’ve brought continuing joy to countless thousands. Be proud.

Your tutelage isn’t confined to anatomy. You teach tolerance and acceptance. You’ve brought masturbation out of the closet. Thanks to erotic writers, the shame that has crippled so many lives is in rapid retreat.

It isn’t just self-loving that erotica writers have rescued from ignominy. By reading erotica, people can see a pair of thighs gleaming above lacy stocking-tops through the admiring eyes of a leg-fetishist; gaze into cleavages with the glee of boob-fanatics; appreciate the allure of skinny bad-boys or beefy bears; feel the sweet bite of canes through the tingling senses of masochists and enjoy the swelling pride of dominants who are being served well. Those vicarious experiences don’t change the sexual preferences of readers but they do help them to understand tastes that some might consider deviant and unnatural.

More importantly, through erotica, fetishists of all stripes learn that they are not alone. Others appreciate the allure of toe-cleavage. Others fantasize about their public nudity being applauded by the sound of mass masturbation. Whatever your kink, if it’s safe, sane and consensual, there should be no shame in it. (Unless shame turns you on, of course.)

It was here that I read Murray Suid’s witty account of his writing a book review for his college paper, and mentioning cunnilingus. His Dean reprimanded him, not for the prurience of his content, but for perpetuating the myth that such acts were performed in real life. If the simple act of oral love can be considered mythical, isn’t even more absurd to think that people might enjoy being spanked, or buggered, or bound?

Your works, ladies, simultaneously give us permission to be honest about who we are and defy those who would blame us for not being repressed and prudish.

Madeline Moore and I write movie scripts. Over recent months, we have been adapting some of the scripts we’ve written and not sold, into novels.

(Adam was kind enough to publish the first such adaptation as my erotic novel, Dominant.) The process of turning scripts into novels has brought home to us an important advantage that the written word has over tales told in moving pictures.
In a movie, you might watch a 17th Century Parisian seamstress find solace with her last candle. (Warming her hands at its flame. What did you think I meant?) In a novel, however, you can be that seamstress.

Only the written word can take people inside characters. The difference between watching a movie and reading a book is the same as the difference between sympathy and empathy. In an erotic movie, you can see and hear a character express joy at buggering or being buggered; dominating or submitting; sucking or being sucked. In an erotic book, you can share the characters’ glee from the inside. That way, you can truly understand not only the physical sensations, but the emotional ones. It might seem contradictory, but there is more realism in what you read than in what you watch.

All of the foregoing, ladies, was foreplay. It’s a preamble to the meat of my essay, which is that I am delighted that Black Lace is both for and by women. Most of the opinions I’ve expressed so far pertain to all writers of erotica, male or female. There is, however, an important difference, to the readers, if they know beyond any shred of doubt that the authors are of the fair sex.

I have written erotica under feminine pen-names. I suspect that my readers have often twigged my ruse. So, when I write of female characters who yearn to be sodomised or who can’t get enough of any of the depraved acts I have described, a reader might think, ‘Of course he writes like that. He’s a man. Real women don’t…’

It’s sad, but many men and even a few women, believe that women feign sensuality for duplicitous reasons – to trick men into marriage or to get pregnant or simply for pay. Yes, a woman’s sensuality can be quite different from a man’s, but it can be just as intense, or even more so.

Men doubting this has ruined many relationships. Women denying this has excused psychological frigidity. An incredible number of women consider the female orgasm to be a myth – and I’m not talking about ejaculation.

But, when a writer who is ‘certified female’ invites readers of both sexes into her mind and extols the pleasures of fellatio or cunninlingus or buggery, and describes in fervent detail the ecstatic glee of a fine climax, no one can deny the truth of what she writes. Women readers can learn that such joy is within their reach. Men readers can learn to become better and more trusting lovers.

Ladies of Lust, you are strippers all, baring your innermost selves, and whatever your motivations, you are simultaneously incredibly exciting and powerfully therapeutic.



Felix Baron writes in a number of genres, under various names, and teaches a Course in Writing Erotica for http://www.qualityofcourse.comHis latest novel for Nexus, Sweet As Sin, will be released in October, 2007 and is available for pre-order now at Amazon.com.