Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Titilating Tuesday

Welcome to the very first Titilating Tuesday here at Lust Bites. I thought perhaps it would be a nice way to spice up the space between Monday and Wednesday. I'll be talking about all things sexy and titilating as we go along. If you've got any suggestions, please feel free to make requests. A disclaimer: As always, what is sexy and titilating lies in the eye of the beholder. This is about my eye but there's no one true way. What I like you may not or vice versa. So if I hit on something that pushes your buttons in all the wrong ways, there's always next Titilating Tuesday (remember I said I took requests).

As I lean in and put on the next record to play, relax and come along.

To start with - What is Sexy?


I was reading something earlier and it went into my “sigh, so not sexy” file. Filled with a zillion fucking scenes but not a one made me even the slightest bit tingly. It was all random body parts thrusting and rearing, twitching and *this is Lauren, scowling* lots of random buttsecks. And whatever, okay, buttsecks can be totally hot in the right erm, hands. It’s taboo, it has cultural baggage - it’s forbidden and naughty and it takes trust to give and receive. When the right author harnesses those things it’s whew, hot, guh! But it’s like any other scene in the wrong hands and I’m left sneering and rolling my eyes and sort of scared of rearing penises. So when it's thrown into a book to be edgy for edgy sake, it's just sort of random. Like throwing in a race car or a tumbler of good scotch. Both sexy things in context. But out of context, well they're just random and they don't fit.

Erotic isn't just about wall-to-wall sex scenes with everything but the kitchen sink thrown in or screwed, it's about context. It can be a married couple, it can be strangers, it can be the first time, the fifth or ten thousandth. It can be foreplay or full-on fucking - what is key is drawing the reader in by conveying what it is that draws them together.

While I’m a very visual person, sexy to me is more often than not about the stroking of my brain. It’s why porn is okay for like five minutes (ten if it's good porn) but after that I find myself bored, amused or horrified. It’s why I like authors who realize it’s not in the quantity of sex scenes in an erotic romance but in how the scenes are utilized.

Don’t get me wrong - a scene with a super-dominant dirty-talking man is hotter than the sun if it’s done right and in context. Really, really hot (eyeballs roll to the back of my head hot). But a man who takes his time to lick the back of a knee or who leans in to breathe in the scent at her neck? HAWT!

So today what in particular strikes me as sexy? So many things, necks, thighs, ears, lips - but to narrow it down for the sake of, say, a blog entry? Emphasis on the every-day, something we might even think of as mundane, can take something normal and make it incredibly erotic.

A while back I was giving my husband a massage - yes a real massage, not a euphemism - and I just became entranced by the way his back felt under my hands. The flex and play of his muscles as I worked, the way his ass felt against me as I straddled him, the scent of his warm skin as I pressed my fingertips into it. The act of ministering to him, of caring for him and easing his stress, became a huge aphrodisiac to me. Also, the fact that he was there, relenting to my control but still like a great big tiger who could pounce at any moment - shiver.

He told me about his day, just little bits and pieces and his voice echoed through his ribs. His hair, once deep black and now salted with gray, was soft against my fingers as I massaged his scalp.

What was the most sexy was the intimacy of the moment. He told me about his day, I told him about my new story idea, we laughed about the kids and normal stuff and it was good between us.

The outcome is something I’ll save for a book, heh, but there is sexy in every day things that aren’t overtly sexual in nature. There is sexy in connection.

So, what about you? What do you think is sexy? Today, anyway...

17 comments:

Janine Ashbless said...

Sexy... I think I remember sexy... But at the moment I have a cold and wouldn't go Voomph if you put 40,000 Volts through me.

Stretching my brain though, these things have been sexy for me in the last few days:

Headrubs. Warm showers on aching joints. Kirsty Young the newsreader (she has the sexiest Scottish accent). Future War (no - seriously - I had this great idea for an erotic SF novel. What a pity no one will buy erotic SF). Pirates. Derren Brown and David Tennant together picking on a random female passerby. The DVD "Wrath of Gods" which isn't bloody available in the UK, the sods.

Gerard Butler is sexy all the time, in any circumstances.

Megan Kerr said...

Playing with someone's earlobe, discreetly, subtly. Someone saying an unexpectedly intelligent and interesting thing. Flattery (yup - it gets you everywhere). I'm having a brief affair with suits at the moment. Something we're actively discouraged from writing because it's such a cliche, but hot candlelit baths with oils, the water shifting like reflective silk.

So: playing with the earlobe of an unexpectedly intelligent man in a suit who keeps flattering me. In a bath.

This is the problem with suits. A man being all powerful and debonair and charming in a suit is, the moment he takes it off, simply a naked man. Worst case scenario: a naked man in socks. So he has to keep the suit on. I just considered that for a moment - ulp - yes - that is sexy. Definitely.

t'Sade said...

I'd buy erotic SF. :) Of course, I've bought and written it, so I'm biased. I do recall there was some erotic SF that actually got in print, I found a series in my mom's library when I was growing up and while the guy was obsessed with calling sex "slicing cake", it was still pretty sexy.

Oh, and Firedancer... yummy. :) But that was more Romance than erotic.

LVLM(Leah) said...

I love suits too. Nothing makes me hotter than a man in a three piece suit. Preferably really clean cut as well. When I lived in Japan and went to work every morning in the crowded trains, every part of my body was being rubbed up against by men in suits, and it was all I could do to not cop a feel. LOL

I also get really turned on by watching DH eat or talk. I love the way his mouth moves. The shape of it. I could watch it forever.

Megan Kerr said...

Public transport erotica: feeling the tips of the hairs on your arm touch the tips of the hairs on the arm of the sexy guy next to you, barely breathing, unspoken communion: the knowledge that you're both sitting there fancying the pants off each other and you've never said a word and are just going to pretend you're sitting like anyone else.

I've no idea how one knows this, but one does. Probably pheremones.

Portia Da Costa said...

Ooh, I wish erotic SF would come back into vogue... then maybe they'd reprint the first two books I ever had published, for Nexus. They were about a virtual reality pleasure machine... and they were completely mad, but fun!

Nothing much is sexy to me today... am just launching into hay fever [oil seed rape pollen, I think] and I feel like death warmed up. :(

If Vincenzo and Professor Hottie walked in, both naked and smeared with jam, I don't think I could summon the energy or inclination to lick it off either of them...

AuthorM said...

Sexy, to me, is different things a different times. I find it interesting how there are triggers I have always had -- tall men. And there are turn-ons I never really had until...something...erm...you know, tripped them. Cowboys, for example.

Sexy for me, can be the bad boy with a sneer and the leather jacket, or the man holding open the door for me even when my arms aren't holding packages but just doing it because he's polite. Or the man who bends to pick up something I've dropped because he's the man and I'm the woman...

Sexy can be many things at different times.

And I love erotic SF!

M

Lauren Dane said...

Janine - it's hard when you're sick. Once though, my dude spent the whole day taking care of me - rubbing my back, bringing me things to entice me to eat - that was sexy.

Oh and hello, I have two erotic futuristics coming out from Berkley Heat. Anya Bast has one too. They're hopefully making a space in the current market.

Lauren Dane said...

Olivia - subtle touches, yes! Men in suits? OH YES. I plan to do a TT on cliches in a while, I think the man in a suit cliche works for a whole host of reasons. Mmmm!

Mme Butterfly - yes, mouths.

Portia - I hope you feel better. We got some rain today after much hot weather so the pollen is at bay for today at least.

Megan! Y'all, Megan has some fabulous erotic sci fi/futuristics through Amber Quill if you're looking.

I like to be surprised. Once my dude bit the back of my neck, hard. He'd never done it that way before but christ amighty, shivers still break out when I think of it and what a delight and surprise it was.

Unknown said...

Well there's that little patch of stubble just under my husband's lower lip, in that indentation before you get to the chin, that just does it for me every time,-so sexy.

I also love reading a really well done sex scene that makes me feel empowered and makes me go looking for the man.

Men in uniform, men who work with their hands and have tool belts, cowboys...I could go on...

Jade Taylor said...

Men walking around barefoot in jeans. Especially my man both barefoot and shirtless. I don't have a foot fetish (and generally thinks men feet are not at all pretty) but there's something about it. Particularly when he lies on his back with his arms up (I admit to both a hairy chest and armpits fetish - each to their own, hey?).

Jade Taylor said...

And - talking of cowboys - Tim Mcgraw in that 'Over and Over Again' video just makes me want to head to the nearest range, even if I'm petrified of horses!

Lauren Dane said...

Kate - indeed. I love facial hair on a man.

Jade - mmm Tim McGraw. I have a thing about his hands, so very sexy.

Anonymous said...

A man in a suit - shooting his cuffs.
Yeah!

New words. Today's new word? Rhee.

Smartass young men who say something cute and are then struck dumb by my MILFy response. I still got it!

Lust Bites - always!

Anonymous said...

OMG!!!When I think of who embodies a man of the elements that makes up SEXY- that is HUGH LAURIE. Those bedroom eyes, the voice and the confidence. Sexy is the way a man plays with my mind with words. Then plays with my body-depends on the mood im in but Im a huge believer of seducing me both body and soul with action and intelligence. LOL hope that makes sense

Deanna said...

Staring at an expressive male back, muscular but not overly so. He can be still but you can almost see what he is thinking and gauge the expression on his face by just by the briefest movement of muscles under smooth slightly tanned skin.

Lauren Dane said...

Madeline - being sexy is sexy!

April - With Hugh Laurie, it's the accent that gets to me every time.

Deanna - mmm! Yes.