Monday, June 11, 2007

Write Sex Week: Day One

by Kristina Lloyd


About ten years ago when I was an apprentice pornographer, I kept hearing that erotic fiction was perfectly in tune with female sexuality. Men, they said, were happy with a jazz mag and a quick hand shandy. Women preferred narrative. We wanted escapism, sensuality, emotional complexity and actual characters.

Either I’m hanging out with a better class of smutter or times have changed. (Actually, I think those two things are inseparable.) Today, mainstream culture is more sexually aware; women are producing and consuming porn and erotica as never before; many sweeping generalisations have been swept up and flung in a cell along with Mel Gibson DVDs and remaindered piles of Men are from Mars, Women are Heinous.

The binaries are blurring. ‘He wants/She wants’ is so passé. Or is it? Maybe what I’m trying to say is: I’m so glad I’m not the only woman who adores the psycho romance of Wuthering Heights and also gets off on pics of men in the buff and who will use any cheap excuse to post a photo of some half-naked brute on Lust Bites.*

Ahem. This week, we’re asking if gender matters. Are there differences in the way men and women write about sex? Do male and female readers want different things? If so, what? Why? Could a man write an erotic romance with a hero women will fall half in love with? Should Black Lace, an imprint publishing women only, open its doors to the hairier sex? Should Lust Bites let the lads in? Can men write convincing female orgasms? Can women write believable male/male fiction? Can straight men do lesbians (hey, quit sniggering at the back) or should erotica writers stick to what they know best?

Anyway, we’re kicking off with a guessing game. Below are seven sizzling snippets. Can you guess if the author is male or female? I’ll reveal the answers on Friday, and one correct guesser wins a copy of Alison Tyler’s Tiffany Twisted, a fabulously funny sexy book in which Tiffany and her boyfriend Kurt find themselves trapped in each other’s bodies. Also on Friday, we'll be unveiling the magnificent 'Lust Bites Monster Woman'! LBMW is a body parts collage brought to you by our barely-draped selves and the creative genius that is Nikki Magennis. You've been warned!

Kristina X

* Half-naked brute is Brandon Mills, pic by Joe Oppedisano. Brandon is 6’2”. Whimpers.

*QUIZ TIME: Male or female? Hold on tight: these extracts are HOT!*

ONE

She said, did I want her to show me what women like. I said yes. It was hard to get my hand inside of her. She had a meaty, fat pussy. You had to go all the way down to the bottom of her snatch to get your finger in. It was so strange once you got your finger in, it was like sticking your finger in the ocean. If she was sitting on me, I used to think she pissed on me. Hot liquid on my balls. I swear she used to piss on me. She told me to hold women when they come, to hold them in your arms. She taught me how to unhook a bra with one hand. She said it would come in handy someday. She asked me if I’d ever kissed a woman down there, and I said no. I may have lied.

TWO

Hot-skinned and sticky about our thighs, the poet plucked me from the rock. Casually, with two unlit cigarettes drooping from his mouth, he took me down to the cold lagoon. I could have fainted with happiness when the cold water rose between my buttocks and lapped over my stomach. When all of me was under the water, except for my head, I nuzzled under Walt’s jaw with appreciative lips.

THREE

"Please," she repeated in a whisper as the cold stream of lubricant drizzled into her crack. She moaned as I opened her up with my fingers, and by the time I slid my shaft into her I knew Michelle had a well-trained ass. She pushed up against me, her fingers still parting her cheeks wide for me, giving me unchecked access to her tight asshole. I reached
under her and pushed the dildo more firmly into her cunt, using my hand to grind the harness against her clit. Michelle's mouth opened wide and she went to scream as she pulsed toward her orgasm, but no sound came out at first. Then a strangled moan of pleasure exploded from her as I felt her asshole clenching rhythmically in orgasmic spasms around my cock. I pumped into her faster, knowing I would come any second. Just as she finished her climax, I exploded into her, filling the realtor's asshole with my come.

FOUR

How delightfully cruel he could be. And how part of her responded to the darkness of his passion. The willing submission flooded her body as the desire seemed to centre within her, unfurling like a moist red flower whose petals pulsed and swelled.

FIVE

His cock slid between her lips effortlessly. She parted for him, taking him in, like his wife never had before. Like no one ever had before. She had been waiting for this and he could tell. The feel of him, the taste of him on her lips was something she had considered many times before. The truth of this set West free. He pushed beyond the barrier or her teeth, felt her soft tongue on his erection, fucked her mouth. He was free. Lulled by the feel of the hot suede of her mouth rushing to encompass him as he gently pushed the rocker back and forth, back and forth. A metronome of pleasure. The universe boiled down to one bright point in his mind – her mouth on him.

SIX

I was hungry to get my cunt stuffed with his dick again so I broke off and told him to doggy-fuck me. He got behind me as I kneeled on all fours and he drove his fat cock nuts-deep into my saturated cunt. He started powering away and I came with a yell and a creamy squirt.


SEVEN

He has the most tender mouth, large and pink and powerful. His kisses set off these detonations inside you and amazingly he can easily take your cock all the way down to its root and slap it back and forth with the inside of his mouth. He loves it when you lean against a tree and screw his face and sometimes as you’re getting there you can feel the mosquitoes biting your shoulders and your stomach and it makes it more intense when you finally come. When he’s about to come, his eyes actually film over. And then you both lie there, staring up at the strange-looking trees in the Asian forest. As the daylight bleeds away, you watch how he vanishes next to you, this lovely black man, he just disappears into the darkness.

41 comments:

Janine Ashbless said...

This should be an interested week. I have been accused many times of being a bloke writing under a female name. People like to put you into boxes.

Janine Ashbless said...

InterestING week. I meant interestING...

Nikki Magennis said...

'People like to put you in boxes'

Like Boxing Helena? ; )

I'm relatively new to this erotica lark, but even I can see how things have changed since say, fifteen years ago when Anais Nin was the ne plus ultra of sex writing for women.

Still got a way to go til women's sexuality is as openly accepted as men's, though.

I remember a couple of years ago in a newsagents, seeing 'Scarlet' and thinking ooh, looks interesting. I picked it up and put it on the counter and the guy at the till guffawed, pointed, laughed and took ten minutes to sell me it. I don't think he quite believed what he was seeing - a sex mag for women.

He seemed to have forgotten the TWO SHELVES of sex mags for men sitting behind him.

Sorry, am I on a tangent again? Oh dear.

Lovely excerpts. Bring it on.

Portia Da Costa said...

I don't really care whether erotica is penned by a woman or a man as long as it's sexy, it's well written and it's got emotion.

Anonymous said...

I think people who write as well as those people are capable of doing or being anything in their stories, so I'd hesitate to read the compellingly "male" or "female" voice in the pieces as necessarily being an indication of the author's real-life gender. Can I just adapt the M. Christian Principle and vote that each author's gender is "writer"?

Nikki Magennis said...

Okay, I'm sure I'm wrong, but here are my guesses:

F, F, M, F, F, F, F

One man sandwiched inbetween half a dozen women? Can't be right. But it sounds oh so good...

Anonymous said...

I can't guess because I know the answers, but I do think this is going to be interesting.

Me, I care about the gender of the author. But then, I'm the kind of reader that, if I read something I like, I want to poke and poke the author and find out all about them. A lot of authors want to be judged on their work, I know. But that's not really how I interact with writing.

I'm Toto pulling down the Wizard of Oz's curtain.

Who are you? How did you do that? What do you have in your pants?

I care too much. And, fuckit, how can I have a proper author crush if I don't know what sex you are?

Anonymous said...

By the way, Janine, I misread "People like to put you into boxes" as "People like to put you into boxers."

May said...

I'm not even going to try. Especially not after called an author he when he was actually a she on my blog.

There is a site where you can copy & paste a passage in and it'll give you the probability that it's written by a male or female.

Nikki Magennis said...

May - really? Do you know the name of it? Sounds fascinating.

Tilly - did you ever read 'Written on the body' by Jeanette Winterson? The protag was of unspecified sex, and though I tried really, really hard to leave the ambiguity untouched, my brain kept screaming to work out if it was a man or a woman.

And lastly - here's a link to some thought experiments that I found interesting.

Alison Tyler said...

Oh, Nikki,

I love that book. My copy is all battered from being read so many times. A delicious book!

XXX,
Alison

Kristina Lloyd said...

Don't get me wrong - I *like* having Tilly as a neighbour. But sometimes you pop round for a cup of tea and a chat and it's all poke poke poke and what have you got in your pants?

Once a bloke said of Asking for Trouble that he couldn't believe a woman wrote that. I guess he thought humiliation and sleazy sex was a male preserve. I don't think he was a seasoned erotica reader, to be honest. He didn't seem to like the book. Ah, well.

Janine, why do they keep thinking you're a bloke? Do tell.

May - we have to have this site! Dig deep, please.

Why is nobody playing my guessing game? You're no fun, you lot. Go on, have a bash. You can win Alison Tyler!

Kristina Lloyd said...

Oh, okay then. You can win a *book* by Alison Tyler.

Janine Ashbless said...

Janine, why do they keep thinking you're a bloke? Do tell.

I like science fiction films, I've no interest in shoes and I insisted on buying a great big flatscreen TV this weekend when we only went into Tescos for bananas.
:-D

Er, no ...

It'll be to do with me writing male POV I suppose. And the brutal fight scenes I love so much. And my inability to avoid pointing out that sometimes sex is mean and selfish and cruel and about power. Oh, and I get off on womens' bodies. Women aren't supposed to do those things, I think.

Don't see why not, personally.

Seriously, I've had people think I was a bloke (huzzah!)because I wrote sympathetically and insightfully (so they said) about a man who was hopelessly in love. And been accused (boo! hiss!) of being a bloke because I did a scene with slavegirls.

Is 'insightfully' a word? Need coffee.

Janine Ashbless said...

Boxing Helena. Never saw it - the reviews made it sound truly unpleasant.

Loved Julian Sands in "Warlock" though.

Janine Ashbless said...

Jeremy, heh heh heh, nobody has ever tried to put me in boxers... I much prefer those soft clingy cotton shorts - the sort that really hold to an arse, you know?

I was once a Best Man for a friend's wedding though.

Megan Kerr said...

Okay, my guesses...
1. man, because "meaty fat pussy" is so gross I can't imagine a woman ever saying that, but I did once hear a man say it
2. woman, although "appreciative" makes me suspicious...
3. woman
4. woman or DH Lawrence, although not repetitive enough for latter - should be "How delightfully cruel he was. She delighted in his cruelty. And how part of her responded to the darkness of his passion, which was darkly, immanently passionate. The darkness of it filled her with delight." etc.
5. again, woman or DH Lawrence (starting to suspect DH Lawrence was a woman)
6. man
7. Erastes (and that's still guessing, promise!)

Now I'm going to go and whip myself for all the gender judgements I just made...

t'Sade said...

Aww, only a 0.7% chance of guessing it randomly. Well, here is my choices: MFFMFFF. Also my favorite sound with a ball gag.

As for gender in writing, I find this a very interesting topic. My handle, t'Sade, is actually used specifically because I don't want to give gender away. I've been accused of being female and as a male pretty much equally. I've also been accused of being a guy pretending to be a female and a female pretending to be a guy. Even had one person ask if I was transgendered. On the few forums that were obsessed with gender, I just flat out said "pick one" and went the most popular choice.

It interesting how people read things different based on what you write. I mean, a proper yaoi romance seems to be different if you think it is a guy or a gal writing it, at least that is what I've gotten from my reviews over the years of stories like Winter Guards or Hoarfrost.

I once found a site that was doing a statistical anaylsis of male and female writers, looking for word choices difference ones uses "around" verses "through" for example. It would guess your gender from a multiple paragraph sample. Even there, it was only around 70% right, when I looked at it. Neat concept, but it pointed out that there is always a group that will write cross gender.

Boxes are a big thing too. People want to put you in a box, for genre or theme or gender in this case. They want to know how to treat you by using your "peers" to identify who you are.

All that said, I'm pretty sure all the Black Lace stories are going to be damn hot, regardless of who writes them.

Even if I can't identify gender by text.

Anonymous said...

Here are my guesses.

m/f/m/f/f/f/m/

Anonymous said...

No one accuses me of being a man. Perhaps it is the bicep obsession.

Anonymous said...

M,F,M,M,F,F,F
I agree that 4 is Lawrence or
a Lawrence wanne be.

I love " suede" and "metrenome" in 5.

Anonymous said...

My guess is that 6 comes from the letters page of a girlie magazine, so it wasn't written by whoever says they did it, but probably the sub-editor.

Madeline Moore said...

This is a great way to kick off what promises to be one of LB's best weeks ever. The only problem is I can't guess...sorry...but M.Christian's visit last week let me know on NO uncertain terms that a good writer can do anything she/he writes. I really love Ray, in my book 'Wildcard' and I put a lot of work into his point-ov-view chapters, so I know it can be done 'cause I've done it. Damn I'm so scattered today, I think it's best I simply say, 'This week will rock!'

Anonymous said...

It's funny you should say that Madeline, because even though I *love* David in Equal Opportunities and a tortured myself over his POV scenes (the book is duel first person). It still took me a long time to think of him as a man, rather than a fantasy of mine.

Recently the actor, mat Fraser, read some of the book aloud for a recording and it was only then - hearing my/his words in these very manly tones that I thought - oh yeah - I did write a man.

Could have been a fluke though.

Alana Noel Voth said...

Excerpt one is from "In the Cut" by Susanna Moore. Detective Mallory describes his first sexual experience to the book's narrator, Franny. I so know this book. Love it! One of my favs.

Megan Kerr said...

I tend to write ominiscient POVs, and then am alarmed - on rereading - to find how much I've digressed into the male side of the narrative (alarmed because the guidelines request predominant female POV). I could digress into a disquisition on female desire to be the object of desire and blah blah, but will instead refer you to "Barely Grasped Pictures" in Sex With Strangers which says the same stuff but with knobs on. And in.
I'm very skeptical of being told what men or women are like, especially as I've been accused, even with my knockers on undeniable display, that I'm "like a man" in x y or z. If we're not working from the actual data of real men and women (and real furry creatures), then what notion are we working from? When I'm actually writing, I rarely think about my character "as a man" or "as a woman" or wonder "what a man would do" in this or that situation. I work on the gleeful, optimistic notion that their personality transcends their gender, and even if it doesn't, writers can be so terribly convincing that the whole WORLD learns how to behave from books (even people who don't read because the film-of-the-book comes out) - look at Madame Bovary - so if I ride roughshod all over notions of gender and enough of a herd gathers alongside me, it'll all cease to matter and people will look back at us as ahead of our time. Well - that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
In the meantime, I'll play the guessing game according to who-knows-what horrible presumptions, and desperately hope to be proven thoroughly wrong. (And if anyone is so offended by my sexism that they feel inclined to spank me, just give us a shout...)

Ally said...

Interesting!
My guess is...
1-M
2-F
3-M
4-F
5-F
6-F
7-F

Good luck everyone.

Anonymous said...

I can't win but I'm still guessing
m f f m m m m

I write a lot of male pov-it probably comes from living with all the men in my family.

Anonymous said...

My guesses:
f,f,m,f,m,f,f

Am I close?

tetewa said...

Loved reading these and here are my guesses. w,w,m,w,m,w,w

Sue A. said...

I wan't going to play, but I'll give it a try for Alison Tyler.

F,F,M,M.F.M.F

I'm dying to know who the authors are. Kristina don't keep us in suspense too long.

Anonymous said...

OK, this is more difficult than I thought! Here's my guess, but it's not much more than a shot in the dark:FFMMMFF.I probably missed most of them. I found myself focusing on the action, and the gender of the writer was secondary. Good food for thought, though.

Nikki Magennis said...

Dear Anonymous 1 and 2 -


We're very glad you're playing, but we need some kind of a name/nickname if we're to enter you in our draw...

May said...

Can't find it at the moment, Lust Biters.

But you might want to check this article out. I'm quite sure that the research team that came up with it was Israeli, so maybe dig from there?

I would do the work, because I'm really curious as to whether it's changed or not--oddly enough, it gave my third person voice a higher female percentage as opposed to my female first person.

Nikki Magennis said...

Hm, fascinating, May!

Quote from the article:

"The computer found that women use more pronouns, particularly singular pronouns, like "I" and "my." Women use the word "not" far more and other negative words like "wouldn't," "couldn't," and "shouldn't." The prepositions "for" and "with" are used more by women, all others by men. Men use the word "the" and "and" more than women do."

Koppel is cautious to draw general conclusions for fear of angering various gender theorists, but he ventures that there is a difference between the way men and women write in a variety of areas.

"It seems that women use the kinds of words and phrases that create a relationship with the reader. Men tend more towards just the facts," he said. "

Anonymous said...

ah hells, nikki, you need NAMES???

*beam*

ffmfmff

i just like how it goes -- 2, 1, 1, 1, 2 :D in spanish, that's called "capicúa" a number that is the same backwards and forwards :D

May said...

Kiki, I think in English it's called a palindrome.

Report: Can't find that damn program. It's driving me batty.

Amanda Earl said...

i want to thank you lust bite folk for raising this issue. i've enjoyed reading the different points of view. i say it again...this is such a resourceful and inspiring site. i may not agree with everyone's opinions, particularly on this thorny issue, but i enjoy hearing them and respect those who have spoken. i also really love the interviews. i'm not participating in which gender wrote what because i don't care. it doesn't matter to me. i celebrate all genders equally, with love, joy and respect.

May said...

I decided to procrastinate again, so:

MMFFFMF

After I decided what my answers would be, I looked through the answers, and it seems that mine are closest to Olivia's and probably the furthest from Nikki's.

Kristina Lloyd said...

May - thank you!

I am gathering all the answers for statistical analysis!

Did you find the Gender Genie? Nikki did and posted a link to it in the Felix comments. It's fascinating. Thank you. I tried the 7 excerpts on it ... and shall reveal all on Friday!

Helen said...

I loved reading this, especially the opening paragraphs. I have never had any interest in what was typically considered "women's erotica." I LIKE dirty stories and I like pictures of naked men. And why shouldn't I? I'm a healthy woman with a healthy appetite! This is the kind of stuff I write and the kind of artwork I create. Keep posting the gratuitous pictures of the scantily clad guys, and keep writing these wonderful posts. I look forward to seeing more!