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!

Coming Attractions

Kristina Lloyd
Hold onto your heads because next week identities start slip-sliding all over the show, and soon you won’t know your ego from your elbow. On Monday, we’re putting the rot back into erotica as one mucky-minded Ms explores sexual degradation and the pleasure of unpleasure. Now who’s mad enough to tackle a subject like that? *Checks schedule.* Oh bugger, it’s me.

Eloise Pasteur is our guest blogger on Wednesday. Well, I think she is. Eloise inhabits the 3D virtual world of Second Life and she’ll be here talking cybersex, avatars and other stuff I’m mainly baffled and intrigued by.

Things start getting hairy on Thursday as award-winning, dick-owning Mathilde Madden marks the publication of The Silver Collar, the first book in Black Lace’s first ever trilogy, with three days of hot sex. Yes, the werewolves have landed! Well, what I mean to say is Mat will be offering us three days of previews, pics, excerpts, wolf chat and general rattling of handcuffs at the moon. What she does in her personal life is her own business. But I think there may be overlap. I've heard them howling.

Kristina X

PS. The heavenly body heading this post is by quemas.

Friday's Slot - Madeline Moore

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Competition Winner

The competition winner on my Sexy Gay Men post is Alison. E-mail me at deanna at deannaashford dot com and I'll send you a copy of Wild Kingdom.


Thank you to everyone who participated, and here is a picture of John Barrowman and James Marsters as they are due to appear in the upcoming series of Torchwood. If you recall they are both playing ominsexual characters. Can't wait for that!

Deanna Ashford

Death and the Maiden: killing characters

by Janine Ashbless

Eight down, maybe nine, thought Veraine, spinning on his heel and shaking the hair out of his eyes, ready for the next attack. The square was in uproar, with people everywhere shouting and shrieking. But when he looked for the Slavers he saw only fallen men, some lying dead and some wounded. He paced a tight circle, adjusting his grip on the slippery hilt of his sword. People scattered before him.

It’s done, he realised, incredulous - forcing his teeth to unclench, feeling the rictus mask of battle relax only slowly. He drew himself upright, taking deeper breaths. The villagers shrank away from him like grass withering before a fire. He tried to lick his lips but his tongue was dry and there was a terrible coppery taste in his mouth. He looked for relief and gratitude in the faces around him but saw only fear. At last he turned back to Tehli. She was staring at him, holding her torn blouse closed. There was no smile on her face either: her expression was one of naked horror.

Reflected in their eyes he saw a monster.

(from Burning Bright)

I am a serial killer.

I kill characters. Lots of them. Not just the villains who deserve it either, as above – though I certainly do relish killing off villains: in Divine Torment for example the high priest collapses with dysentery and shits himself to death. But that epidemic also affect thousands of innocents. And then there’s the earthquake, which partially collapses a clifftop temple on top of a barbarian encampment during a pitched and bloody battle … thousands and thousands of deaths, all so that my two heroes can get it together and run off into the sunset.

Now that’s what I call romance.

But wait, I’m not just ruthlessly profligate with the lives of faceless minions. In Burning Bright I introduce my protagonist Myrna to Anada, a fellow slave of the Tiger Lords; a bright, resilient young woman determined to make the best of her captivity. She falls foul of the sadistic Tiger Queen and is brutally killed during sex. It’s a turning point for Myrna, who determines not to accept her fate passively. A reader told me: "When I read that I got really worried. Because I realised you might not let the heroes survive."

He could be right. My personal idea of a satisfying ending is one which includes Tragic But Redemptive.

"La Petite Mort" is a conceit expressing the dissolution of the conscious self that comes both at orgasm and death. But death is a dangerous and uneasy participant in erotic fiction.. Sometimes it seems a seductively logical extension of where the action’s going: there’s a tendency in some (usually highly literary) fiction to kill off the female protagonist (it’s almost always a female one) because the writer makes her so submissive, so self-abnegating, so yearning for humiliation and surrender that he (yep, it’s usually a he) can’t think of anywhere else to stop. It’s like the writer is aesthetically offended by the idea of someone who finds profound satisfaction in pain and submission on an evening but gets up the next morning perfectly happy and goes off to work and meet her friends.

I don’t kill my characters for that reason. I don’t think BDSM tendencies are a mental illness. I don’t think submissive women characters are "asking for it." I’ve only once fucked a character to death – in The Temptation of St Gregory (a short story in Cruel Enchantment) – and it was a man, and he was a jerk who deserved his fate, and it I wrote it because I was so irritated by the sacrificial girlies in other collections. And it wasn't a bad way to go, with an ‘angel’ at one end and a ‘demon’ at the other:

She understood. With a smile of infinite compassion, she parted her robes with one hand, revealing a small, white, and perfect breast tipped with a little nipple of maidenly pink. Gregory gazed at it with holy awe. She tilted him toward her and his mouth closed over that cool, stiff point. As his despised flesh below thrust towards its unholy apotheosis, Gregory began to suck upon the angel’s breast. Ecstasy incomprehensible exploded in him. The fire and the light became a howling flame that tore him apart. His body poured pulse after pulse of acid seed into the hungry cunt of the demon, and his soul erupted forth.

That passage - in which the actual experience of dying is portrayed as erotic - is all but unique in my writing. I usually portray death as painful, frightening and to be avoided if possible. So I ask myself why I do kill characters.

Well, partly it’s because I write in fantasy/historical settings where armed combat is part of the milieu. I love my warriors, with their honed bodies and their self-reliance and their skill and their courage and their refusal to be victims. (To set the record straight, much like Madelynne Ellis in her Bloodstained Men post below, I like my violence safely distanced by fiction – and preferably a non-contemporary setting - or by a ritual/sporting context: real violence in the real world absolutely repels me.)

Partly it’s because in the context of these settings I want my villains to be real villains. If someone is introduced as a terrifying opponent to my heroes I want him to be genuinely worth opposing, not just a bit of an irritating sod. (In an early VBL novel which I shall not name, a character in a Norman Conquest setting was introduced as being almost diabolically evil – which was certainly worrying and intriguing for me as a reader until it turned out that by "evil" the writer meant "has such incredibly good sex with his floozies that when he dumps them they CAN NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER MAN". At the time I concluded that the writer either knew nothing about Anglo-Norman history, or was a complete moron. Okay, nowadays I’d be more charitable and mutter darkly about romance genre limitations but back then I naively hoped for narrative honesty.) My own villains are real bastards and they do commit murder.

So it’s about drama.

It’s about doing something that matters. My fictional worlds are (almost as much as the real one) places of injustice and cruelty and sudden violent death. In the face of these, my characters get to decide where they stand. What it is that matters to them. What they are willing to fight for and perhaps risk everything for – in other words, because this is romance, for each other.

Other authors may be able to carry this off in the setting of, say, a pastel-coloured suburban wedding, but I like to paint with a broader brush and deep shadows. I find it difficult to define what has value and is good, except in contrast to what is terrible. I write erotic romance because I think love and pleasure have value: how can this be seen except against the contrast of loneliness and pain? How can a sacrifice have worth unless it involves loss? How can an action be courageous except in the face of fear?

Here’s Veraine, fettered in the dark and waiting to be tortured to death:

He was a soldier, and he had always known it would end this way, or worse. He had never had any prospect of dying in his bed, peaceful and happy. How many people did? Civilians got to fool themselves that death was not inevitable, that it wouldn’t hurt, that that it would wait until you were ready. But a soldier knew the reality. Death was not an option; it was inevitable. What you had on your side wasn’t hope or defiance but courage. Simply courage to face it.

I shall die silent, Veraine told himself: he will not make me scream

There was one shred of comfort and he wrapped his heart around that thought. Every man died, and few in the cause of anything of worth. They lost their lives for trivial reasons; for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, for turning their head to the left instead of the right or the right instead of the left. For a misinterpreted glance, for an incautious remark, for being too cowardly to act or too brave to run. They died by mischance, by stupidity, by ignorance, by the casual malevolence or cool indifference of others more powerful than themselves. But he, Veraine, was going to die because he’d made a choice. He had let the gods know that there was something he wanted more than fame or riches, more than anything else in the world. Something he would sell everything in his life for. His soul’s desire. And for once the gods had listened.

He’d had her. For only a few hours, but with such intense passion that even before the priests had discovered them, he’d known that he wouldn’t emerge unscathed or unchanged.

In the darkness, invisible, his dry lips tightened in a fearful smile.

(from Divine Torment)

Along with real villains I want to read about heroes who are genuinely courageous. How can you be a hero if you aren’t mortal - if you risk nothing? Superman isn’t heroic – he’s just better than everyone else. Wolverine is a fake – I actively dislike the character – because no matter how many fights he gets into the hairy bastard is incapable of really losing. At worst he walks away to fight another day. That is just so wrong!

I’ve read happy-hippy-trippy erotica where the heroine tumbles giggling from fuck to fuck and finally for no reason at all decides she Loves the hero For Ever and Ever. No pain, no stress, no drama. And you know what? - I cannot bring myself to care. And oh God I want to care, when I’m reading and when I’m writing. I’m not just in it to give my wrist some exercise, you know. Just because it’s erotica doesn’t make it vacuous! I want to believe in these characters. I want to root for them (and along with them…) I want to fall in love with them. I want to feel their emotions.

I believe love and lust both matter. I believe in passion!

Once on another website I was thoroughly castigated for apparently holding the opinion that the ultimate heat-death of the universe renders all romance worthless. No guys – you’ve got it all wrong. I think that love only has value because we are so fragile, and ultimately at the mercy of an indifferent world. Our own unique experiences as are ephemeral as sparks. There are unimaginably vast tracts of time and space out there, and only in the human sphere does any of it have meaning. I think that mercy and justice and truth have value because we nurture them into existence against all the odds. I think that the things you make a stand for are what define you. I think that if you’ll give your life for something then it has value.

I kill because I think it matters.

So when I wrote a novella for Black Lace’s forthcoming Magic & Desire collection I took the decision to start with the death of the romantic hero. And when his lover, the high priestess of Inanna, chooses to descend into the Land of the Dead to find him again, she has to confront all her worst fears and surrender everything that is most precious to her. And she has to come face to face with her own motives and see herself in her nakedness:

I’m parched, and grateful when the gatekeeper eases me into the water. I wonder briefly what it is he has left to take from me – and then he dunks me beneath the surface and begins to scrub me. He is very thorough. There are moments when I am sure I am going to drown on the very threshold of the House of Dust. I’m too exhausted to struggle, almost too exhausted to care. He scrubs every inch of my skin. He scrubs my hair. He scrubs the inside of my mouth and my cunt and my arse. Then he drops me in the pool and wades out.

I kneel in the water until I regain my balance, then rise to my feet. I feel almost empty of sensation. The water is curiously heavy, reluctant to ripple even as I wade across it. The black surface reflects better than that of a mirror, and with one glance down I am snared by my own reflection. I stare in horror.

In all my life I’ve never seen my own face without the temple makeup upon it. My face, even to me, was that of the goddess: dark-eyed, dewy-lipped, smooth and lovely. Without the paint I have the face of - Well, I could be anyone. A merchant’s wife. A domestic servant. I’m a little paler than average perhaps, through working indoors. My wet hair hangs in black strings. My eyes look small and lack drama without kohl. My lips are less full. Two lines crease my neck and tiny bird-prints bloom at the corners of my eyes. There is no seduction, no fire, no delight in this face. Instead there are freckles across the bridge of my nose.

I didn’t know I had freckles.

I close my eyes briefly, searching within. The goddess has gone. I understand what the last gatekeeper has taken from me and it fills me with cold thick despair. I am not a goddess. I am not the centre of all desire, the heart of all love. I am not Inanna anymore. I am just me.

Throwing back the bar, the gatekeeper opens the Seventh and last Gate, then turns and looks at me.

‘I can’t go before her like this,’ I tell him. Even my voice sounds thinner.

That hooked beak opens to speak: ‘The laws of the Underworld are perfect. Do not question them.’

Bowing my head, I climb from the pool and pass through the door. Beyond is a short ramp down onto a grey plain. Slowly I descend, until I sink over my toes into the dust that covers everything, and the great lead doors close behind me.

(from The House of Dust)

xxx
Janine Ashbless
Blog: Website : Fiction/Photodump

Movie Deaths: Troy – The Fellowship of the Ring – Spartacus – Gallipoli - 300

And the winners are...

I know it's a bum rap [ouch] Fionn and Stacy, but your names came out of the hat in my Carry On Shagging/Wild in the Country prize draw!

Could you please get in touch with me a portiadacosta at gmail dot com [or the link on this contact page] so I can send you your books?

And thanks again to all who very kindly commented... I wish I could have given you *all* a prize!

love

Portia Da Costa

p.s. bottom courtesy of the lovely Madelynne Ellis. Not hers, obviously, just a choice piccie from her collection. ;)

Bloody men

by Madelynne Ellis


A few weeks ago, Kristina Lloyd teased us all with her love of wet men; well I have a similar fascination for bloody men. I’m not all that hot at analysing my own reasons for liking things, mostly I prefer to accept that something is and not delve to deep, but for the purposes of this collection I’ve done a bit of prodding and poking and made a few discoveries.

Let's get a few things straight: I'm talking cuts and bruises here, nothing more visceral, no gaping wounds and missing body parts, and I don't particularly enjoy watching men knock nine shades of hell out of each other, so it’s nothing to do with them being macho and fired up on testosterone that makes me tremble with delight. Maybe it’s a teeny bit to do with the knowledge that they can handle themselves, should the need arise, maybe not…

So what is it about a black eye or a bust lip that grabs my attention? Generally, I like pretty men, a bit of polish, even a hint of make-up, but add bruises to the mix and you instantly add layers of interest. How did he end up with blood smeared across his shirt? Why? Just one flaw in all that perfection adds a whole history.

"Vaughan’s body was lean but muscular and tapered neatly at the waist. His arms and shoulders were strong from his love of fencing, the same sport that had given him his oft-admired thighs. However, the most striking feature of his near-nakedness was the pale silvery line across his left side that marred the surface of his skin. Lucerne traced its length curiously with his fingertips, and then with his tongue. It appeared to be a duelling scar.

There’s a maternal aspect to my fascination to. “Are you all right?” I long to ask. “Here let me look at it? Let me kiss it better.” As well as a darker, sadistic one. “Does it hurt if I press it?’

And bruises are such pretty colours, all those purples and blues with a hint of green and a splash of yellow. I’m the child that given a present of eye shadow for the first time proceeded to make my sisters look as if they had black eyes. Actually, that same fascination lasted into adulthood, faking injuries is still my favourite bit of Stage Make-up. I’ll quite happily while away an hour or two painting bruises onto my knuckles, or faking taut silvery-white scars.

"A smile of satisfaction spread across his ruined visage. The skin across his left eye was creased into a web of red and silver lines. The eye itself was milky, while the rest of him was undeniable handsome. Once he’d have been painted, admired, celebrated, but the fates had turned a cruel hand. Thea clasped her fist to her chest. Stark turned his head to one side, then the other, showing her his flawless profile, then ruined one. The widest of the scars was the same breadth as her finger. It overwhelmed her with such a terrible urge to touch. He knew he was making an impact.

I love the fact that blood is so red and shiny against the skin, and the way it flows, drips and splashes. The way it runs inside a collar, just like a bead of sweat or a drop of water, but blood is
far more erotically charged than sweat or water, it's very essence tied up in the symbolism of life. It's forbidden imagery too in our post-HIV world, where its presence can mean danger to more than the injured party - although I'm not into blood play myself. Ms Jolie can keep her knives and her vials of her lover's blood to herself, thanks. Mine is a purely voyeuristic pleasure.

"Asha tentatively pressed her tongue to the first of the ten long gashes and licked. The mixture of blood and poison tingled on her tongue. It tasted bitter, although the ripple of pleasure that flowed down her throat was sweet. She licked again, her tongue delving into the wound, and the taste became acrid. She spat it out, then returned to the wound and began to suck. Beneath her, she felt him tremble, and his spine stiffen. ‘Shh!’ she soothed before tending the next gash.

So folks, tell me, am I alone in my obsession or do bloody men do it for you too? If so, have you a favourite image to share? I'm rather taken with Mr Sharpe's smile up top. You can check out a few others who didn't quite make it into the post over on my blog.

Madelynne Ellis

blog : website

Excerpts from i) A Gentleman's Wager ii) Desperate Measures (work in progress) & iii) Broken Angel.