Spouse-Sharing, Knicker-Wetting, Flying Fucks, and Other Scenes of Amorous Tenderness

by Jeremy Edwards"How do I love you?" a composite character from my stories could hypothetically (and rhetorically) ask another composite character.

I love you letting me talk obsessively about your ass, though the subject bores you: "That's why it's my job, and not yours, to appreciate this ass we speak of." [Any Day of the Week at Oysters and Chocolate & Sex and Satisfaction]

I love you inviting me to masturbate with you, despite the fact that we can never be a couple: "Oh, but it is a compliment . . . . You obviously have no idea how much I love masturbating alone in my bedroom." [If We Were at Clean Sheets]

I love you dressing up as your three best friends, one after the other, because you know I fantasize about fucking each of them: “Last I knew, this was a monogamous relationship.” I looked around from left to right, as though expecting extraneous women to emerge from the pantry or laundry chute. [Any Friend of Hers at The Erotic Woman]

I love you deliberately, sensuously pissing your panties for me: Ah, to hold her hand across the table and watch her features relax as she gave in to her wetness. [Slightly Ajar in F is for Fetish]

Am I a "romantic"? I think I am – though Hallmark hasn't approached me just yet in re. of their Valentine's Day line. (Hmph. I thought "To my lover/Golly gee/It turns me on/To watch you pee" was rather inspired. But I guess "golly gee" is a bit outdated.)

During college, I was in a brief, ambiguous relationship with a woman who was sort of breaking up with her boyfriend – or maybe not so much. (You get the idea, probably a lot faster than I did.) One evening, I showed a lack of interest in something she said along the lines of long-stemmed roses. "Don't you have a romantic bone in your body?" she asked. Leaving aside the question of which bone, when properly stimulated, might be the romantic one, I protested that my university punk-rock ethos was romantic – by which I basically meant idealistic, with extra hormones. She seemed impressed by this (but, then again, the boyfriend was out of town).

Now I'm going to step back even further and, since you insist, tell you the details of my first wet dream. It simulated a chaste encounter with a sexy high school teacher, who was based loosely on a real-life sexy Latin teacher. (Yes, I had the good fortune to learn early on that the world was replete with counterexamples to debunk every unjust stereotype. As an adult, I would be cavorting with librarians long before it became fashionable.) In the dream, the teacher was giving us a tour of "ROMA ANTIQVA". (She wasn't shouting, she was merely conforming to ancient Roman typography.) Just before debuting my virginal seed, I noted that the above phrase sounded sort of like "romantic-a" – decades before Ellora's Cave had their own wet dream and trademarked the term. Other writers may boast of their masturbatory proclivities for wordplay, but I may be the only one who doesn't mean it metaphorically.

And if only I'd thought to mention this piece of personal history when my bones were accused of being 100% unromantic: "It just so happens you're looking at a guy who's had wet dreams over the word 'romantic.'"

I continue to invoke a broad personal definition of what's romantic. As a reader and writer, I find there's a special kind of erotic electricity to be enjoyed in romantic synergy that crystallizes around the mundane, the absurd, the incongruous, the funny, the awkward, the silly, the strangely compulsive, or (last but not least) the ass-in-your-face raunchy.

My enthusiasm for the offbeat romantic doesn't mean that I think modern or even postmodern life has rendered rose-giving and other traditionally "romantic" experiences obsolete (except, perhaps, those that depend on modes of transportation that are no longer extant; it really is hard these days to make love, in either the archaic or contemporary sense of the term, atop a penny-farthing bicycle, and don't think I haven't tried). Nor do I assume that the offbeat romantic is a modern invention. I don't know my Sappho or my Catullus, and it's been a long time since I dipped into your Flaubert or the neighbor's Stendhal . . . but, surely, the entire history of good literature must be full of unique, unpredictable, and surprising romantic images.

However, I'm not here to speculate about the classics; I'm here to excerpt some hot contemporary erotica. So let's all open our textbooks to a scene from Stan Kent's My Finest Hour, one that makes my toes curl with joy. At this point, the narrator has been watching his wife fuck another guy for page after luxurious page:

They're on the shower floor. He's eating Lizzie. With their splayed bodies blocking the drain the water builds up in the shower, but they don't mind. They're like some primeval amphibious creatures writhing in a stream, struggling for the land so they can multiply or die. He has his hands on Lizzie's hips, and he's working her on his face, and she's pressing down on his back with her legs and they're squirming around. Lizzie wedges herself in the corner and sits up facing me. This is the first real eye contact we've enjoyed since she began fucking the sharply-dressed man, and she smiles and blows me a kiss.

Sigh.

Our Kristina Lloyd's Nothing But This is a bizarre, mysterious, enchanted tale of refined sensuality and transcendent eroticism – and, dare I suggest it, of love. My favorite moment in the story is one in which the romantic connection between the characters reveals itself through mutual knowledge and understanding, cutting through the haze of unreality and disorientation that KL has masterfully created:

"Hey, brother," calls Uncle, addressing Tom, "does she like it in her ass? Huh? A big prick in her tiny little asshole?"

Tom's too zonked to reply immediately. He just sprawls there, half-dead, before his head rolls sideways, eyes still closed. When he finally speaks, it sounds as if it's costing him an enormous effort. "Probably," he croaks.

Like Kent, KL evokes an erotically convincing emotional connection between lovers at the very moment that one of them is physically rather connected to someone else.

Anyone for Alison Tyler? As if I need to ask! Other People's Panties, for instance, is a showroom showpiece of kinky romanticism. The structure of the brief story is such that to excerpt it might risk spoiling it – so I'll just link and insist that you scroll down and read it. Now.

Personally, I can't think of anything more romantic than what happens in the AT story you just read. And yet, I'm told, Hallmark still hasn't made an offer on this one.
In Christopher Hart's Drift, two jaded characters are whisked away from a glitteringly sordid reality by an impossible, inexplicable, externalized romantic force that is literally beyond their control:

Her feet too were dangling free in the air, and kicked lightly against mine. We were six inches off the grass, a foot, two feet and rising. We were also drifting dangerously towards the house.

"Um . . . " she said, cautious, English. "Is this . . . ?"

I was cool about it. "Gravity seems to have failed us." I didn't feel cool about it all. This was supposed to be a hollow seduction, nothing more.

Perhaps this externalization is an example of an antiromantic's romanticism that is quintessentially postmodern. Whatever it is, I find the description of the cynical couple's absurd ascent into a magical mingling to be – well – truly uplifting.

Now I look forward to hearing about your favorite offbeat romantic moments. And shameless plugs are encouraged!

***Kristina says: Add a comment and you could win this sexy little quartet of books featuring Jeremy's work and some of his hot picks: A is for Amour, F is for Fetish and Caught Looking, all from Alison and Cleis Press, plus Quickies 3 from Black Lace which includes my enchanted tale of – ahem – my story, Nothing But This, reprinted from Sex and Shopping.

Write Sex Week: Day Four

A week full of boy blogs really wouldn't be complete without a visit from one of our favourite erotica writers,Jeremy Edwards, who has kindly offered us not only a post but a naked picture.

Really, what more could a girl ask for?

Take it away, Senor Edwards:


Being a male erotica author, there are places I'm automatically
ineligible for publication. How do I feel about that?

Pretty good, actually.

Isn't it discriminatory?

Technically, maybe. But not really, in my opinion.

Isn't it unfair?

I don't think so, all things considered.

Here's how I see it: We live in a world in which women have been
second-class citizens--or worse--through most of history, in almost
every human society. To this day, women as a group are, to one extent
or another, subordinated by patriarchal societies virtually
everywhere.

For example, in the U.S. (where I reside), this translates into a
continuing wage gap between men and women; persisting double standards
regarding sexual freedom; and governmental policies that willfully and
viciously restrict access to birth control and sex education (and we
all know which sex that affects most severely).

And that's the mild form of subordination. In other parts of the
world, a woman can still be sentenced to death for actual or alleged
sexual activity, by governments wedded to misogynistic ideologies.
Now, those societies are not the places where erotica is being
published, and so they are not directly related to this discussion;
but I mention the grim fact of their existence simply as part of the
big picture of women's lives in twenty-first-century human society.

Bearing all of this in mind, I think, in our world, that it's very
understandable that some women, seeking autonomy and independence and
fulfillment, will insist on certain cultural spaces to call their own.
Places where the content is not only "for women," but also by
women. Places where women, and women alone, articulate their own
needs, their own concerns, their own problems, and their own
fantasies.

Nikki butts in: Articulating our fantasies? This calls for more naked men!

(The other Jeremy Edwards.)

And I think it's no surprise that the broad area of sexuality--from
the erotic arts to sexual health to sexual self-discovery--is one
where it can be particularly important for women to have that room of
their own. Because we live in a world in which women's sexual needs,
in particular, have been ignored, denied, misunderstood, and even
demonized for century after century, by society after society.

On the one hand, consider the phenomenon of a dominant group shutting
out an oppressed group (e.g., White people barring African Americans
from their clubs, or heterosexual parade organizers prohibiting gay
groups from participating in their festivities). On the other hand,
picture a subordinated group restricting participation in its
activities to members of that group (e.g., a ballroom dance class for
lesbian couples only). The difference between these two types of
scenarios is, in my opinion, a critical one. The former type of
instance is an expression of bigotry, whereas the latter represents an
attempt to secure a little independence and autonomy. These two types
of "discrimination" are just not the same.

I'm not presuming to say that the strong, self-actualized women who
publish with a company like Black Lace are personally oppressed or
victimized by male-dominated society. Nor am I asserting that about
their readers. But I think there are good reasons for the fact that
some women want to read erotic books put out by an all-female team
(it's not just something created out of thin air by marketers), and
these reasons have to do with the historical and contemporary position
of women in a patriarchal world. In that context, I think that "by
and for women" enterprises represent a legitimate and healthy response
to the continuing struggle of women to claim their fulfillment and
dignity in a world that still has a long, long way to go.

If the day comes that women run the world and guys like me have no
place left to publish our smut, then I'll protest. Until then, I say
long live the cultural spaces that women have designated as their own.
May they blossom, thrive . . . and provide all of us with some damn
sexy reading.

Jeremy Edwards

Jeremy Edwards is a pseudonymous sort of fellow whose efforts at
spinning libido into literature have been published various places
online, as well as in print anthologies. His greatest goal in life is
to be sexy and witty at the same moment--ideally in lighting that
flatters his profile.

A huge thanks to Jeremy for baring his um, innermost thoughts...now it's your turn! Let us know what you think about feminism, literature and Jeremy's Big Fedora...