The Pleasure of Unpleasure

by Kristina Lloyd
All writers get bad reviews. If you write erotica, your sexuality gets reviewed as well. Trust me, you sometimes need a thick skin to deal with this. We are all, as individuals, never more vulnerable than when we reveal our desiring selves to others, and smut writers do this on a grand scale. Sure, it’s framed within a fiction and no one can see us blush. But with that distance comes a space which allows strangers to pass judgement.

Here are a few things that have been said about me. I mean, about my books:

Most of the sex scenes are degrading - not arousing.

Great if you like the idea of being humiliated and called slut etc., not so great if you don't.

Ilya is a man who truly doesn't respect Beth in the least, doesn't even like her.

You would think that an erotic fiction book would be at least a little bit sensual

I pitied Beth more than I wanted to be in her place.

One of the worst Black Lace books I have ever read.

I found some of the BDSM disgusting.

Nothing against a kinky read but I don’t like mental abuse in erotic books.

Ouch!

My grumble isn’t really with negative comments; I think it’s par for the course when you’re a writer. And I’m pleased to report, they’re vastly outnumbered by the very many positive, insightful, considered reviews my work has received over the years.

No, my problem is with the way erotic humiliation is so frequently misunderstood, reviled and marginalised. I write a lot about women who get off on being used, degraded and verbally dominated; about rape fantasy; about discomfort, conflict, fear. Pain isn’t my kink. Spanking is off my radar. Rough stuff and psychological humiliation is more my theme although, of course, the physical and the mental don’t form neat parcels for anyone. When I write about this and someone says 'Ew! Gross!', they're saying that what turns me on is wrong.

An editor once reminded me that erotic fiction needs to focus on pleasure rather than be a vehicle for dysfunction. I was so stunned by this I didn’t eat worms for the rest of the week and almost quit my basket-weaving. I am not dysfunctional. I am not damaged. And what on earth is ‘pleasure’ anyway? It sounds suspiciously like scented candles to me. The notion that female erotica should be softer and more romantic is wildly offensive. Ditto the implication that a women who wants to be dominated by a man must be lacking her own mind. She doesn’t want it. She’s merely a victim and it’s her damaged, self-loathing psyche talking. Oh, purlease.

I get a lot of pleasure from unpleasure, from being made to squirm, from hating it and loving it all at once. All those who are with me, say ‘Ay!’ One of the most moving erotic scenes I’ve ever read is in Stephen Elliott’s My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up. The narrator, a male submissive new to the BDSM scene, after hours of being tied, gagged, hurt and demeaned is fucked with a strap-on. Elliott writes:

I had never been entered before. She leaned across my back, wrapping one arm around my chest and gripping my neck with her other hand, occasionally squeezing my windpipe so I couldn’t breathe for a second. I cried again, but it was a different crying. I was very comfortable. I don’t think I had ever been comfortable before.

'Comfortable' might seem an odd word to use in this context but I think it’s perfect. For me, it’s that sense of dreamy, egoless relief that arises in the tension between pleasure and unpleasure. Subspace, to use the jargon. A lot of my characters (jeez, I can’t think who they’re based on) get off on being treated badly, on being distressed, reduced, shamed and scared. They’re not screwballs, nihilists, emotional masochists or lacking in self-worth. It’s a sex thang. They can still function.

Beth, my central character in Asking for Trouble, is a woman exploring her taste for sleaze, danger, submission and humiliation. Ilya is the enigmatic stranger she’s newly involved with. She confesses her fantasies to him: ‘I just like picturing things where I’m being used, objectified, degraded, that kind of stuff. It’s liberating. I’m in someone else’s hands. I’m not being me.’

Once upon a time, academics wrote about Black Lace books and the new phenomenon of women writing porn. One academic, analysing Asking for Trouble, quoted the above dialogue and said, ‘So once again then, we see in the woman who liberates her sexuality and embraces eroticism the simultaneous flight from selfhood.’

Guh? Flight from selfhood? Isn’t half the point of sex the way in which we can transcend ourselves? (What’s the other half? Someone remind me? Oh yes: cock.) In Split, my spooky puppets and bondage novel out early next month (US, January), I explore what submission and degradation mean a little bit more. Kate is falling in love with Jake, the strange and beautiful curator of an isolated puppet museum in the Yorkshire Moors. She’s gradually coming to understand how the power imbalance of their sexual relationship fulfils her:

He breaks me down, strips me of inhibitions and when I’ve sobbed and climaxed until I don’t know who I am, he wraps me in his arms, so soft and tender.

Do I sound like a masochist? I don’t feel like one. The point isn’t the pain and I don’t suffer. Or rather, I go beyond suffering and into a new space. If I could get there without it hurting, I would. I think that’s why I like it when Jake calls me ‘slut’ and makes me feel bad. It takes me there, helps me lose myself […] and it’s as if I’m in a nothing space, floating. I am so free there.

It’s such a feeling to be free of yourself. I didn’t understand it at first. I think it scared me but I’m getting to know and understand it. I’m coming to realise that I want this not because I’m worthless and I must suffer. It’s because I’m human and life’s tough. Letting go is so powerful. Surrender transforms me. I adore oblivion.

Kate, like Beth, is a woman conflicted about her sexuality. I think this is true of a lot of people whose kinks are on the dark side, and I think this is OK. We hear a lot about ‘sex positivity’ and having a ‘healthy’ attitude; and while I applaud the sentiment it leaves me feeling a tad uncomfortable. It seems so neat, clean and tidy, and leaves little space for angst or doubt. Where we want to go and what we want to do or be done to us can be disturbing, terrifying, upsetting and exciting. It’s pleasure but not as they know it. Accepting conflict and contradiction is a significant part of accepting our messy sexual selves. I’m sure ‘sex positive’ was originally meant to encompass this but it’s easily miscast to imply unproblematic happy-jolly-fucky sex. It can make me feel dirty, and not in a good way.

I like brutes and bullies with a nice line in contempt. I like back alleys, seediness and squalor. I like scary scenarios that make my heart beat faster. All these things break down the ego and strip away the veneer of the civilised self. And when you’re without that constructed identity, when your dignity and self-respect have been put on hold, then boundaries shift, inhibitions are lost. If anything, those who like to indulge in being broken down need to have a very secure sense of self. They must be continually piecing themselves back together again afterwards.

I imagine a scene. To some eyes, it may look like a woman on her knees in a crack den, sobbing in shame with her hair full of piss, being mocked by a couple of thugs. But for plenty of people, suffering and degradation is intensely erotic. It’s the pleasure of unpleasure, of being split between yes and no. I like it there. I’m comfortable. The scented candles can go hang!

Lust Bites Interviews Stephen Elliott

by Mathilde Madden

"I take responsibilities for these stories, for every sexual act depicted, many of which occurred when I was younger, before I made the effort to acquire the information I needed. I acquired scars instead. This is not a memoir, but it's damn close. And I'm okay with that. And I'm okay with you knowing that."

Stephen Elliott

from the introduction to My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up.

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Stephen Elliott is an ex-stripper, a political activist and the author of six books, including Happy Baby and the almost-all-true sexual memoir My Girlfriend Comes To The City And Beats Me Up. He is the founder of Progressive Reading Series which helps authors raise money and participate on behalf of progressive candidates across the United States and has written a book about the Democratic Presidential nominations. He has also edited a forthcoming collection of political erotic stories Sex for America – featuring Lust Bites' Alison 'Randy Little Bitch' Tyler among others.

It's 9am in Los Angeles and Stephen Elliott hasn't had any coffee. He says this means nothing he says can be relied upon, 'like sleep talking.' Meanwhile it's 5pm in Brighton and I have spent all day proof reading werewolf erotica by reading it backwards. I need a distraction, frankly, and what could be more distracting than a funny, kinky, political, extraordinarily talented writer. He's single, by the way, he told me to say that.

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Your writing is very truthful about being a submissive man. Do you feel exposed by what you write?
It is truthful. It started with Happy Baby. When I was writing that I was still very much in the closet [about being submissive]. And then my friends read it and started to put things together. I didn't have to come out, people just knew. And I felt more free. I felt better with people knowing. Of course, there were a lot of dumb comments and questions and I got tired of explaining things to vanilla people. Especially if I didn't really think they would understand.

I was playing cards with some friends and we're arguing about something and one of my guy friends says, 'You don't seem very submissive.' And I was like, 'Fuck you.' This is a nice guy. A liberal. But they don't think anything of making fun of my sexuality.

Also, another thing about being open. I do a lot of political writing and organizing and I've been attacked because of my open sexuality. So it's had negative ramifications on my career.

But I think it's best just to be who you are. To be as open as you can be. My only limit to my openness are limits placed by my own lack of self-knowledge. And I'm working on that.

Some people find 'coming out' makes them feel stronger and more secure. You lose the fear of exposure
Right. Nobody can expose you once you're already out.

But it's hard to think of many submissive men who have outed themselves rather than been 'Exposed'
I don't know. I can't think of any.

God. Are they're really not any?
Open, submissive men. Must be some. I'm trying to think of public people, writers, artists, politicians, actors.

I just thought, oh yeah, there's that guy who wrote that book... and I was thinking of you!
Ha. I've cornered the market. That's why I'm rich.

Do you think writing about sex and being open about your sexuality is a political act?
Definitely. That was one of the reasons I published my last book. Which is very graphic, and very open. We have the Bush administration which is really waging a war against people that practice consensual S&M.

We have to be open about who we are and what we do. We have to force people to accept us. Otherwise we're going to be persecuted.

Would you describe yourself as an erotica author? A sex writer?
I would describe My Girlfriend Comes To The City And Beats Me Up as erotica. But I wouldn't describe myself as an erotica author at all. Or a sex writer. I've written six books and only one of them is erotica.

Happy Baby is a novel that deals with BDSM themes, but it's not erotica.

An erotica story is a literary story (which is to say character driven) where the primary activity driving change is the sexual act. That describes some of my stories, and all of the stories in my last collection, but not the bulk of my work.

I'm a literary writer who is open about his preoccupation with the BDSM lifestyle.

*

Eden attaches a clip to my nipple. 'Do you want another one?' she asks.

'Yes, please,' I say. And that’s how it goes, as my voice gets weaker and she lines my body with her clips, finally running a string of them down my penis. Every movement increases the pain.

'You’re being so good,' she says.

'I love you so much,' I whisper back.

She strokes my face. I keep thinking to myself how nice she is, wondering why she is so nice to me. It makes me want to cry. We have the whole day. Her husband said she could spend the night; her son is away from home at camp. My roommate is home in the next room with his music turned up. That’s the world around us. And then there is Eden and I and all the clips she’s decorated me in, her initials carved across my back, the bruises on my belly, the twenty-five stripes she cut into my shoulders. 'So pretty,' she says. She takes the clips off one at a time. We’ve been together over five weeks now. I see her four or five days a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. We don’t always do this. We go to movies. We go dancing. We shop for fabric and groceries and I keep her company while she sews. I go to her house and I make her breakfast and sit on the floor next to her chair, working on my articles while she manages her affairs, her husband at work in the city. We do other things, but this is what we’re doing now.

Stephen Elliott
from Just Always be Good in My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up

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Your work is so condensed and precise. Do you go through a lot of drafts? How do you know when you're done?
A lot of times I write the first draft of something in one sitting. If it's like a short, short. Or a short story. Then I'll spend the next three or four weeks rereading it, and it kind of breathes, getting larger and smaller, until I can't make any more changes. I have to read something a couple dozen times and not want to change a word to really feel like it's finished.

I know that sounds kind of pompous, but it's true.

But then I'll work differently on longer things. Like right now I'm thirty pages into a non-fiction, memoir-ish book. Though I guess the process is kind of the same.

In this book the sections are very open ended. Kind of building on top of one another. It's a very strange book

What is it about?
It's kind of about everything. But first it's about a murder. Then it's about another murder. One of the side plots is my addiction to BDSM.

When Alison Tyler set up this interview she said you were in one of her anthologies and she was in one of yours.
Alison is in my collection Sex for America. She has this amazing story in there. All of the stories are fiction, politically inspired erotica. For example, there's a story by Jerry Stahl about having an affair with Dick Cheney in the back of a gun store.

And I have a story in her book, Love at First Sting.

Which is best erotica or porn?
Hmmmm. That's a very tough question.

Erotica is not necessarily erotic. Really good erotica does not have to turn you on, and it should be good even for people that aren't into what you're writing about. But porn should always appeal to the viewer, reader.

Erotica is art and I would argue that porn is not necessarily art. So porn is better.

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For more of Stephen's work visit his website for some excerpts and reviews. Naturally, you can buy his books online US/UK - or in real bookshops. And you can also be his friend.

One commenter today will win a signed copy of My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up. So speak up if you want to win. And please let me know if you can think of anymore *out* submissive men. There must be some. I'm thinking maybe rock stars… There must be one. Alison? Alana? Can you help with this one?

P.S. In honor of Stephen Elliott, for this week (from Friday the 13th through Friday the 20th), take 13% off any order at Extreme Restraints. Enter "elliott" at checkout to receive the discount.