The Sensual Traveler: The Exotic Erotic

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

My husband and I just returned from a week-long cruise to Bermuda. The days at sea gave us the rare luxury of time when we had absolutely nothing we had to do and absolutely no set schedule. A queen-size bed, an ocean view, and no reason not to spend the day in the queen-sized bed, watching the hypnotic blue silk of the ocean and immersing ourselves in each other.

Then there was Bermuda itself: a riot of fragrant flowers, warm azure water, colorful old houses, hot sun, scented breezes, and pink sand. At night, you could smell frangipani and salt water, hibiscus and greenery, on the soft air, and tiny tree frogs made a racket with their constant mating calls. Horny little buggers, tree frogs, almost as bad as the younger tourists and the island boys doing their mating dance in the bars at night. Bermuda aroused all my senses in a very erotic way, and my clever husband wasted no time in taking advantage of this. Repeatedly, despite us both being weary from long days of snorkeling.

Since one can’t have sex or snorkel (or have sex while snorkeling, but we wouldn’t do such a thing now, would we?) all the time (pity, that) and since I am an erotica writer, I found myself wool-gathering about why travel is so sexy.

Hot vacation encounters are a staple in erotica, with whole collections devoted to the topic. (Wicked Words: Sex on Holiday and E is for Exotic, among others, feature Lust Biters’ takes on the topic.)

From a writer’s point of view, it’s easy to understand why we revisit this theme: instant conflict potential. From cultural and linguistic misunderstandings to the inevitability—or is it?—of parting, the vacation fling or romance provides built-in ways to make your characters miserable even while they’re having amazingly hot sex. And if your characters are already a couple, removing them from their ordinary lives can shake things up, revealing all sorts of unexpected emotions, desires, and inner turmoil. Besides, exotic settings give you an excuse to waste time trolling around travel web sites and dreaming about your own future vacations under the guise of research. (Oops, was that the outside voice?)

But it’s not only in literature that exotic locations bring on erotic encounters. Most of us who’ve traveled at all could confess to a night of passion (or at least a titillating, much fantasized-about flirtation) with a stranger in a strange land, or to enjoying a familiar lover in a new way under foreign skies.

But why? Let me count the ways…and then ask for your theories and stories.

If you’re on holiday, there’s no reason not to take a mid-day siesta with your sweetie, or to “sleep” in without getting a lick of extra sleep. For some of us old married types, simply having a little relaxed time with the spouse, far away from leaking faucets, hairball-yakking cats, ringing phones, deadlines, etc., will wake up a lazy libido. And for those of us who stoke our libidos constantly due to writing smut for a living…well, things are bound to get interesting when we’re pulled away from the computer and we can finally apply all that sexual energy to real life!

Then there’s the exotic setting—see Bermuda, above. Anything could happen in this new and seductive place. You’re already on a grand adventure, your senses already stirred. Makes that much easier to get turned on, isn’t it? Back in college I met a boy in the walled medieval city of Avignon, on the night of a festival that involved the wild white horses of the Camargue being run through the narrow streets and wine being flung about to drench unsuspecting passersby. In a more mundane setting, I might not have looked at him twice, but in such a wild atmosphere, sparks flew that had very little to do with him and me and a lot to do with the exotic excitement of the night. (The wine, which was flowing liberally into us as well as into the gutters, helped, but those white horses really did me in.)

Sometime just before dawn, when we were all fucked out and the wine was gone, we all bundled back into our clothes and wandered up onto the deck. The air had a nip to it, and the breeze was strong, but it smelled like ocean and, faintly, like herbs. Pale stars still hung in the sky, and at the eastern horizon, the sky was just starting to turn pink. We didn’t snuggle or anything, even though it was cool enough that it would have made sense to huddle together for warmth. We just stood there, holding the rail, letting the sea breeze wash the funk and smoke and stale alcohol off us, not talking, until the sun came up and Corsica came into focus through the fog.

I don’t know about you, but I find hotel rooms, with their clean, bland white sheets and their comfortable anonymity, a spur toward loud, messy, sheet-destroying fun. Even if it’s a random roadside motel halfway to someplace more interesting. Maybe it’s because hotel rooms are all about the bed. Maybe it’s something about “We don’t know these people, so who cares if we make embarrassing levels of noise?” or not having to wash the sheets. (Note: Courteous horny travelers should always leave large tips for housekeeping to make up for any strange stains we leave in our wake.)

The “I don’t know these people” attitude can be taken several steps farther, of course. Travel can take on the air of if it happens in a different country (or state or city), it doesn’t count. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and all that. No guilt, no recriminations, no complications, just play safe, have fun, and come home with spicy stories to share with your girlfriends over drinks.

I helped Claudel open his pants. He was hairy, also uncircumcised—just assume they all are unless I say otherwise, a lot of Frenchmen are—and smelled like Camembert. Stop with the faces, Fiona. I know it doesn’t sound all that appealing now, but think about it. You’re in the bowels of this ferry, rocking back and forth, hearing the Mediterranean slapping against it as you move through the night. You’re young, on your way to someplace you’ve never been, someplace that smacks of bandits and The Count of Monte Cristo. You’re about to fulfil one of your top ten masturbatory fantasies, and someone has just succeeded in ripping your tights and is nudging the head of his big cock against you, trying to push his way inside. At a time like that, the hairiness and aroma just seemed French, and thus exciting.

The erotic possibilities are endless—a vast stock of sultry, seductive strangers (complete with attractive accents) to pick from. Maybe you’ll even try something edgy enough you don’t want to share it with your girlfriends. That hot couple? The leather-clad dyke? That obviously inappropriate biker/older married man/priest/barely legal piece of boy- or girlflesh? Why not—who’ll ever know?

It had always been a fantasy, being at the centre of a gang-bang, men everywhere, one after another using me—or me using them, or us using each other, however you want to look at it—until I was aching all over from orgasms, my jaws hurt from sucking so many cocks, and I was limp as a come-slick rag doll. But it wasn’t like I was about to suggest that fantasy to anyone back in the States. I didn’t want to be known as the gang-bang bitch […]. This was my chance, with a bunch of hot guys I’d never see again. […] And everyone knows that what happens during junior year abroad—and especially what happens on a road trip during junior year abroad—doesn’t count anyway.

Of course, “no complications” doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes your sultry stranger turns out to be more fascinating than you expect, and you linger in Barcelona when you’d planned to move on Segovia, and you try to change your ticket home, but finally you have to leave and you find yourself running up huge phone bills, IM’ing to all hours of the night, and trying to figure out how to bring together two vastly different lives. Here we enter the territory of the erotic romance, with hot sex aplenty and hope for a happy ending. And that possibility may be the most seductive fantasy of all.

So…why do you think travel is sexy? Got any good stories to share?

Excerpts from “The Wildest Thing” by Teresa Noelle Roberts (in Wicked Words: Sex on the Move)