... But I Won't Do That!

by Janine Ashbless

She ran her hand down Brad’s chest and stomach, all the way down to that silky cock touched by morning sunlight. Brad stirred, woke and turned to her with a sleepy but wicked smile. They kissed , their tongues-
NO!! STOPPIT!!

Brad took a mouthful of champagne, then pressed his lips to hers. Insinuating the tip of his tongue, he parted her lips enough to let the liquid, warm from his body but still fizzy, pass from his mouth to hers-
NO!!! AARGH !!! OHMYGOD I’M GOING TO HURL…

Okay, it’s a bit embarrassing. I’m a smutwriter. I write - whisper it because my mother might be listening - porn. So I should, like, have the heart and stomach for just about anything, right? Nothing should shock me. (Well, nothing legal.) All expressions of consensual sexual passion should find a place in my imagination and my writing, shouldn’t they? I mean, I’ve covered exhibitionism and panty-wetting, bondage and anal, threesomes and facials, gay sex and dragons. What’s my problem?

My problem is that like most people I have my Achilles’ heel. My problem is that I’m not the omnisexual lust-goddess I ought to be.

My problem is kissing.

Yeah. I can’t stand kissing with tongues. In real life, a peck on the lips is the furthest anyone gets and French kissing makes me run for the hills. You see, I’ve a mild phobia about saliva. Mostly (but not entirely) other people’s saliva. It’s just GROSS! Yes, I know my attitude is irrational and stupid: saliva is the most insipid, harmless and inoffensive of all the body products, and I don’t have any particular problem with the others. I can stick my tongue anywhere else on my partner’s body – but not in their mouth. I can’t bear to watch someone cleaning their teeth. As for that romantic morning-after kiss in movies – I have to put my hands over my face. And I cannot bring myself to write it.

There are of course other motifs I don’t write about; mostly because they are things that don’t spark my imagination. Sex toys and vibes are fine and fun but I can’t fetishise them for literary purposes. I can write femdom but I don’t do submissive males (I can write raging chained-up men just dandy! But they have to be forced rather than willingly submissive. Maybe I should worry about this…) . But the fact is, if I tried I could put myself imaginatively into the shoes of someone who was fixated by such themes. I could write them. I just haven’t done it yet.

Kissing … No Way. It’s not a case of Don’t, it’s Won’t. I won’t fake it that far.

I would do anything for love – but I won’t do that.

So I thought I’d ask around at Lust Bites Mansion and find out if the other authors had any embarrassing little quirks, weaknesses, or aversions. It’s a busy day, because we’re all gearing up for our First Birthday. Yes – we’re nearly One Year Old!

Before we set off, by the way, here’s the small print:
This post is offered in a light-hearted spirit, without intention of oppressing or marginalising People Who Kiss. I don’t like kissing. I am allowed not to like it, and to express that feeling. You are allowed to regard me as a silly twat. You do not need my or anyone else’s approval or consent, explicit or implicit, to validate your Consensual Kissing Lifestyle: you are an autonomous adult, for chrissakes. Exactly the same goes for all other opinions expressed below.
Terms and conditions apply. The value of your investments may go down as well as up.

First of all I found Dayle Dermatis vigorously warming up the band in the Ballroom. She has a dedicated musical streak, you know. She told me: "Here's what I don't get, or do: showers of any sort. Golden, brown, rainbow. I THINK I can understand the idea behind golden showers, or at least the idea that having to pee a little can enhance sensations, but that's it. Keep those bodily fluids far, far away from me. I don't think I could even write about them convincingly. Heck, I don't even like portapotties!"

Olivia Knight was in the Kitchen, doing something fairly surprising with a broomstick to a nice young man. She said: "Leather masks - they're freaky. Gimps are disgusting. A nose squashed down by fabric is as horrible a sight as a missing nose, to me. Even in shop windows, they don't suggest a dark and dangerous world of edgy thrills - it's the visual equivalent of stepping in a dog-turd. Barefoot. Along with leather masks, I won't have anything to do with master/mistress action - but that's because I have a sense of humour and I can't say "Yes, sir" with a straight face. (I was a difficult child at school.) Role-playing is like the elephant in the room, and while everyone's cowering or towering, I want to yell, "Get over yourself! It's a game! You're just pretending!" I like my characters (and my people) to be absolutely true to themselves, which is hard to do when you're coming over all strict-nanny and secretly loving it."

Portia Da Costa said: "I just listen to the story and write what it tells me to. And my psyche tells me to write pretty tame stuff and lovey-dovey romance." Then she went back to instructing the Sommelier: a handsome older man whom she had somehow persuaded to wear a dress. To be honest I don't believe the "tame" bit, Portia!

Mathilde Madden "won’t do clothes. Shopping sprees, being spoilt by men with unlimited financial resources, sugar daddies paying for lovely shoes or pretending to be a high class hooker and dressing up in whorewear. I like to write about women making their own sexual fantasies come true, not having sex to get other things. Not dressing to please. And female exhibitionism is a mystery to me. I’m a voyeur. And – talking of clothes - I can’t stand too much description of what the female character is wearing. I so don’t care. Or her ‘slender yet curvy’ body. Tell me about what the guy looks like!" Luckily Mathilde is in charge of Security for the party and her team of enormous muscular men obediently wear no clothes at all.

Kate Pearce, who was out in the Stables discussing marquee ropes with some dusty fellows in boots and leather chaps, surfaced from the hay long enough to gasp "I just don't get the whole chain me up, treat me like a dog and put me in a cage thing." Then she was lassoed back inside with a cry of "Yee-hah!"

Probably that was just as well because at that moment along came Kristina Lloyd, who is co-ordinating the entertainment for the evening – some sort of puppet show, she says with a wicked glint in her eye. She told me: "There's loads of stuff I don't write about because I'm not really into it rather than because it transgresses some limits. I stick to femsub and I explore it quite deeply. And it's my kind of femsub, meaning the scenarios are often rough, humiliating, unpolished. I don't depict formalised role-play and disciplining. Authority figures (daddy, master, teacher) give me the creeps. My male characters' dominance is about testosterone and cunning rather than elevated social status. And I'd sooner chop off my right arm than write 'He' when it should be 'he'. Ew! Domming via bad grammar. It makes everyone look so silly."

Madeline Moore, busy setting up the poker table, was particularly specific: "One line I will not say and will not write. It’s this: ‘I could have peed my pants!’ This is a statement women use to indicate that their funny bones have been tickled in a big way. I hear it a lot, always from women. Why don’t guys, who’ll say anything, never say that? I don’t find pee sexy, but I might write a golden showers scene someday, who knows? It’s not beyond me to why some women get off on the intimacy of a partner’s warm, sterile bodily fluid splashing over her skin, running in yellow rivulets down the crack of her ass, over her thighs, her breasts, what the hell, even into her mouth. I think I get it. What I don’t get is why so many women are blithely willing to share their bladder inadequacies with all and sundry. Who among us wants to know that she has poor bladder control?"

Alison Tyler, who is going to be in charge of the cocktail bar, was directing her staff out on the Patio (Brave considering the time of year, but she always brings the California sun with her). She looked worried: "I don't know. I don't know what I won't do. As soon as I think, hmmm, I can't comprehend that smoking fetish, someone will patiently explain why watching Catherine Deneuve inhale makes them want to shoot. Or if I question the eroticism of sploshing, I will find myself invited to a sit-on-a-cherry-pie party, and all bets will be off. But I suppose this is my general rule: I think of anything in the erotic world that might seem off-putting, and then imagine Jason Isaacs (or whomever) asking me to do that to him. Damn, how quickly my viewpoint shifts."

But the last word goes to Teresa Noelle Roberts, speaking from the Hot Tub where she and her piscine friend Dylan were getting the temperature just right: "What I have the hardest time writing is basic vanilla sex. With well-developed characters, it works, because then it's about the characters and the relationship. However, in a shorter piece without a strong emotional context, it can get very Tab A and Slot B. Boring! Don't get me wrong. Vanilla sex can be lovely with the right person, but writing about it...it's the "right person" factor there. Toys and tricks and third parties make it easy to focus on the hot physical details, but when it's one-on-one and pretty straightforward, you have to get the characters' heads and hearts involved or the story's flat. And when you've got 2000 words or less, that's a challenge!"

So there you go. Oddly, nobody else mentioned kissing at all, but most of us have our stumbling blocks. What about the rest of you out there?

xxx

Janine Ashbless

Website : Myspace blog