GSOH

By Mathilde Madden


Sex is a staple of comedy, from vicars and tarts to the filthiest 'blue' comics, from seaside postcards to the rather lovely Boyce and Statham and their dubious relationship in the Channel Four sitcom Green Wing. But how about going the other way (missus?) – how about comedy in erotica?

I used to be funny.
I used to be a stand up comic. I made a lot of jokes about sex. I had jokes about breast implants, jokes about male sexuality. I had a joke about fisting. (Get me drunk and I'll probably tell it.)

And actually, writing erotica and writing or performing comedy are very similar. In both case you are using nothing but words to create a physical reaction in your audience. You can never be sure if you've got it right. You can only do what you find funny or hot, but the way your audience react will soon let you know if you've hit the spot; be it the funny bone or somewhere lower down.

I think comedy and comic writing, if it's a skill you have, can be really useful tools in erotica and erotic romance. I'll explain here how I use them and how I think they can enhance the book. And you can chip in at the end and let me know if I've got it right.

Funny Boys
So the heroine and the hero finally fall into bed. Passion is rising. After 150 pages of bickering and unrequitedness and angst and conflict they're finally going to do it. And it's *hilarious*.

Yeah. So, I know. Sexy and funny don't always mix.

But a lot of women say the main thing they look for in a guy is a good sense of humour. So forget tall dark and handsome – for a really sexy hero give him a few good lines.

Actually though, why not make him gorgeous *and* sexy.

David in my book Equal Opportunities is a good example. He's a great looking guy. He's also in a wheelchair and, a lot of the time, he's pretty pissed off about that. But whiny self-pity isn't really attractive in a hero, even if - like David - they have lot to feel sorry about. So I gave David a strong sense of humour and a sardonic voice that could poke fun at his own problems without making them trivial.

In my second novel, Mad About the Boy, my heroine Sophie is torn between her long time boyfriend Rex and male escort Mark. Mark is absolutely gorgeous, and Rex, well, Rex is lanky with bright orange hair. But Rex is way sexier than Mark because Rex is, just, well, Rex.

*

Rex parades into my sitting room, right on time, carrying a huge stack of dirty magazines.

'I have presents,' he says, answering my yet-to-be-asked-question, 'sleazy presents.' And the magazines drop from his arms onto my stripped floorboards, sliding over each other glossily, like a sort of naked-man-slick.

I pick up the nearest one. It's called Boy Time and it looks like a gay porno. 'Rex,' I say, brightly, turning the shiny prettiness over and over in my hands, 'do you have something to tell me?'

Rex laughs, shaking his head cheerily. 'Sadly not – I was still heterosexual last time I checked. But you know, if I had turned to the dark-side in the last twenty four hours, I so would tell you by throwing a pile of gay porn across your front room.'

*
Funny Heroines
There is some debate about whether funny women are sexy. I've never had any complaints, but some female comics used to say it stopped them getting dates. But in erotic romance having a funny heroine can give her a sassy quality that means she doesn't take herself too seriously. In a book like my novel Peep Show, where the heroine is doing some fairly unethical things (spying on gay men having sex, using a photo of her own super-hot boyfriend so she can chat up gay guys online), giving her a sense of humour about them stops it all getting too seedy.

Here's a short example. Our heroine Imogen's take on her online beau Dark Knight's reaction to the photographs she sends him of her hot boyfriend Christian.

*

To say Dark Knight loved the Crouching Christian, Hidden Nothing pictures is a massive understatement – he practically proposed when he saw them. Although, sometimes he's not the most articulate rampant cyber dominant in the world, especially when faced with this level of tongue tying eye candy, so his praise was mostly restricted to the words: 'You are one hot pup', repeated in various combinations.

*
Funny Stories
Sometimes comedy can be more than just a character. Sometimes a whole erotic story can be comical. In the upcoming Wicked Words collection Sex in Public, my story – Lust for Glory - is pretty much a comic romp. Albeit a romp through a world of glory holes and getting crushes on the men from Lost. But this is quite definitely a comic story as much as an erotic one.

It's from the heroine Lou's point of view and, as with Peep Show, the heroine needs a sassy voice because of some rather unethical behaviour (you'll have to read the story to find out just what) but this is the closest I've written to out and out erotic farce. And I like it.

*

Gracie says, 'Do any of you lot want to earn some extra spending money this weekend?'

Gracie runs her own sort of company. Sort of. It's basically a catering company, but she likes to pretend they do events management and party planning as well. They don't. They reheat vol-u-vents and serve champagne. And it's not really even a proper company because Gracie's family are utterly loaded and the entire organisation is being propped up by the generous handouts her family keep giving her (supposedly to avoid paying inheritance tax).

I don't like working for Gracie at the weekend. For any number of reasons borne of both laziness and class warring principle, but she does pay pretty well and I've been a bit trigger happy on EBay lately - my last credit card bill was just a piece of paper with the words 'Oh-my-fucking-god' written on it.

'Front of house?' I ask, because wafting around topping up champagne glasses is slightly better than unloading and reloading a dishwasher in an ancient kitchen.

Gracie winces. 'Front for Willy or Markie, back for you, Lou.'

'What? Why?'

'Um, well, it's kind of a men only kind of party.' Gracie says and makes such a weird face that you would actually think that she couldn't possibly conceive of why a group of men would want to have a private party with no women around. Her. Her who is sitting here next to Mark and William. William with his hand down the front of Mark's trousers

*
Funny Business
I was going to say here that I don't always write funny. But I do actually usually tend to get a little joke or funny line in somewhere. A recent story I wrote I thought was pretty straight until a crit partner told me how much he liked the little jokey line about the Christmas present. (I'll tell you where you can find that joke as soon as it's confirmed.)

So, I guess I always write a little light hearted, but when I read, I like allsorts. In fact I love angst and buckets of gore and abject misery. But, for my writing that's just not my style.

Course there's funny and there's funny. Nothing in erotica is worse than an unintentionally funny sex scene. You know that thing about having people laughing *with* you rather than *at* you? Never more important in funny erotica.

So, tell me, do you like your heroes funny or brooding? Are funny heroines sassy or just smart arse? Do you like comic scenes in your erotica, or does it break the mood? Do you want to laugh and squirm?

Should good erotica laugh you into bed?

Tilly aka Mathilde Madden

Girls as Boys: Cross Dressing the Other Way

Guest Blogger: Fiona Locke
http://fionalocke.net

‘Frank, I am very sorry to hear how badly you behaved this morning. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I intend to punish you severely. Prepare yourself at once,’ I added, getting out the rod. He glanced at it with a look of fear, and a hot flush rose to his cheeks.

He let down his trousers and placed himself in position across the end of the sofa.

I tucked his shirt up and began to apply the rod, and as I was angry with him, I laid on the cuts smartly, raising long, red weals all over the surface of his white bottom. He wriggled, writhed, and rolled about in pain, half turning over on to his side for a moment, so that I saw the front part of his naked body. And what I saw paralysed me with astonishment.

‘Frank’ was a girl!

*

That was the scene that did it for me. Frank & I is one of the great classics of Victorian flagellant erotica. And I read a lot of such stuff. Punishment always turns me on, but in this instance it was the idea of a girl being punished as a boy, by a man who doesn’t know she’s really a girl.

Cross-dressing is a common fetish if you mean men dressing as women. Transvestites describe the joy of wearing soft feminine things, so unlike male clothes. I experience the reverse when I hide my girlish curves in boys’ clothes. It’s strangely erotic, the thick and unflattering cotton Y-fronts and boxer shorts that cover so much more than a flimsy pair of knickers. I feel surprisingly vulnerable, stripped of my feminine wiles and charms. The strict headmaster of my fantasies might take pity on a whimpering girl, but he’s not about to be lenient with a boy.

I’ve done a lot of roleplay as a boy. School canings across my taut schoolboy shorts. Formal 19^th century birchings in my Eton tailsuit. ‘Rent boy’ scenes in my Edwardian boy’s suit. (Honestly, before Tipping the Velvet, I had no idea any other girls were into dressing as boys.)

I have some modern clothes too; teen boys’ stuff fits me pretty well. I have to bind my breasts and tuck my hair up under a hat, but I’m reasonably convincing if I don’t have to talk. My boyfriend took me to a strip club in the States once and the low lights helped my disguise. One of the dancers asked if I was gay, but she didn’t suspect I was a girl! Using the gents’ loo was an especially naughty thrill, though I didn’t have the courage to use the urinal. I chickened out and went for the privacy of the stall with the locking door.

Of course, the costume I love best is the one I don’t own (yet). In the days of Nelson’s navy, common seamen were flogged, but midshipmen were bent over a cannon and caned. It’s one of my oldest and most enduring fantasies – a girl who disguises herself as a young gentleman and suffers the wrath of a zealous young lieutenant. I wrote that story, ‘Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter’, for Sex in Uniform, managing to combine three of my fetishes: caning, uniforms and cross-dressing.

I wrote another girl-disguised-as-boy story for Sex and Music called ‘The Apprentice’. And when Nexus Enthusiast commissioned Over the Knee I couldn’t resist another chance to indulge my peculiar kink, this time in a pure spanking arena. But enough teasing; here’s a taste. The narrator, Angie, always wanted to know what it’s like to be punished as a boy. In this scene she’s role-playing a schoolboy who’s got on the wrong side of a bully.

*

The cane slashed through the air and into my bottom with astonishing force and I couldn’t hold back the breathless cry of pain as my body tried to process the sensation.

The pain began to swell and crest until I thought I couldn’t bear it. I bounced on my heels, trying to will the sting away. My nails gouged into the windowsill and I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that I was a boy.

Boys don’t cry, I thought, desperately needing courage. I repeated it in my head like a mantra.

When he finally stopped, I stood up, stumbling a little.

‘Back in position,’ he ordered. ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’

With a soft moan, I resumed the position.

‘This time you can drop your trousers, boy,’ he said. ‘And your underpants.’

I gasped.

‘You heard me. You’re a cry-baby, Shepherd. And cry-babies are punished on the bare. Now take them down.’

‘But Carruthers—‘

‘Now, boy. I want to see those baby-cheeks. Drop your trousers or I’ll do it for you.’

I blushed so hard my scalp tingled. But I wasn’t about to disobey. With a mournful sigh I bent to the task, unbuckling my belt and unfastening my trousers. I held them up for a moment before letting them slip down to the floor. They puddled around my feet and I stood before him in my boy’s underpants. Putting them on earlier had felt sexy and transgressive, but now I was self-conscious. I knew Peter was thoroughly enjoying my discomfort and I hesitated only another few seconds before hooking my thumbs into the elastic and pushing the cotton underwear down my thighs.

‘Feet apart.’

I managed to shuffle my feet away from each other until they were about twelve inches apart. Then I felt the cane tapping against my backside. I winced. I knew he would use it hard. After all, he wasn’t punishing me; he was punishing a boy who had broken the schoolboy code by telling tales. No matter how much you were bullied, no matter what was done to you, you did not squeal. As always, he had set me up nicely.

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