How Many Times Can *You* Say Cock?

All right, I am up in the wee hours, and I followed a link from Rachel Kramer Bussel's blog to this blog regarding Old School erotica vs. New School erotica. The writer has just discovered Anais Nin and says: As I read her book, I thought about the erotic that’s on the shelves today. How many times can one person write “cock” or “pussy” in a story. Nin’s writing would be good even without the sex. But if you pull the sex scenes from many of today’s erotic novels, you’re left with a plot-less bunch of words.

Now, personally, I like cock. And I like to just slip the thing in wherever possible. In fact, I have a kneejerk reaction against this sort of statement, because early on in my writing career, a family friend read my story "Wanna Buy a Bike?" His slap-me-in-the-face comment? "It would be a great story if you left out the sex."

Sure, but it wouldn't be an erotic story. Look, I like the sex. Leave in the sex.

I also have to agree with the writer about the fact that sometimes erotic novels are all sex. I'm currently working on a novel just like this. If you took out the fucking, you'd be left with a few ands a the or two and maybe a cup of coffee. The rest is just wham bam thank you ma'am sex from here to Sunday.

But I'm also thinking about the many modern stories I've read that aren't plotless bunches of words. Stories by writers like the luminous Nikki Magennis, who kicks off my new collection Playing with Fire with this flasher:

Lucifer and Venus
Nikki Magennis

When I think of him I smell the hot gravel tang of phosphorus.
He lights matches with his thumbnail. He’ll burn a whole box, flicking each red-tipped head until it flares into life, shaking out the brief flame and tossing the blackened stick at his feet. Profligate. Fickle. Mesmerizing.
Every night he circles, restless, glittering at every woman he passes. And later still, when the night’s bleaching pale, at last he’ll drag that sharp nail across my throat, between my breasts, over my belly and down to the soft dark shadows.
He’ll strum until I catch light and turn brilliant.

And Shanna Germain, who penned the following wistful story for J is for Jealousy:

Intoxication
Shanna Germain

Jilted. That's how it makes me feel when I watch him watch her. I walk into our dining room and he's looking, no, he's staring at her legs. Long, solid legs, the kind he likes best. Legs full of potential. Legs full of promise.

I stand next to the table, wearing the high-heeled black boots he loves so much and the black lace panties he bought me for my birthday. Nothing else. Nothing but the dark blonde landing strip that I shaved for him so carefully.

And still, he doesn’t take his eyes from her legs. He spins her. She swirls and falls, the red of a crimson silk skirt, of blood, of heartbeats. I can smell her: black cherry. Vanilla. Bitter almonds.

He buries his nose deep in her. Inhales as though her scent contains something that he needs in his lungs. I shift in my heeled boots, waiting for him to notice me, to say something.

“God, you smell good,” he says. He doesn’t mean me. He never means me.

I stand there, wet already inside my panties. If he would just look over. Just notice. But no. He puts his mouth against her, tastes her with lips and tongue. He tilts his head and closes his eyes. Swallows her down. The edges of his lips are stained with her juices.

He is lost to me.

****

It wasn’t always like this. Before her, we were happy. We were more than happy; we were in love and lust. We fucked everywhere. Our kitchen table has gouges out of it from my fingernails. He ripped up our most expensive sheets once just to bind my arms. The paint in the hallway shows the marks of my palms from when he held me there.

Then she came into his life, young and sweet. Holding her promises bottled inside, begging him to unlock them. She beckoned with her legs and her full body, with her scent and intoxicating taste.

Now, his hands never cup me. He has forgotten my curves. His tongue no longer savors my flavor.

His hands know only the twist and come of cork. His ears hear only the long, low pour of liquid to glass. His lips meet her hard edges and give everything. While she gives him nothing in return.

When they are done, when they are drained and sated, I cover him with a blanket. Then I take her into my hand. Her legs are less enticing now, bruised and battered. She has emptied herself into him, become dull. I lick around her wasted edges and taste only the places where his lips touched her. I would ruin her if I could, but they are connected in some way that I cannot grasp, and I am not strong enough to try it.

****

I try something else. I spend the day with her, tasting her, drenching myself in her perfume. When he comes home, I am sprawled across the bed, holding her. I wear nothing. She is my accessory.

I breathe her scent into his ear. ”Hold me, fuck me.”

He licks my lips and sighs, and then he does, oh, he does. His hands stroke my curves and edges, they open me up and taste what’s inside. I’m not what he wants, I know that, but I can pretend long enough.

He slides into me, yes, but he doesn’t make me cry out. He doesn’t bind my hands. He doesn’t make me feel. He fucks me, yes, but he doesn’t shatter me the way he used to. He’s forgotten how.

When he leaves the room, he takes her with him. He takes her into his mouth before he’s even out of sight.

****

Now, she makes him soft and weak. She has taken all his resolve, his desire for anything but her. They lie on the couch together and he rubs her curves, murmurs, “You taste so good. I love you so much.”

He doesn’t mean me. He never means me.

I’m wearing my new dress. It is the red of an eight-year pinot. When I twirl beside the couch, the skirt becomes the swirl of fluid inside glass. It shows off my legs, long, solid legs, the kind he loves best.

He looks up. His lips are stained with her. “What?”

It is worse than when he didn’t look up.

I take her from him. I bind his hands. I pull him from the couch and force him to his knees in front of me.

She sits and waits, silent. Her scent is everywhere.

I make him watch as I spill her dark fluid across my body until I am covered in it, until my dress is soaked in her and my skin turns the color of blood. My body runs with her, vanilla and bitter almonds. He bows before me, suckles at the hem of my dress. Runs his tongue up my red legs.

“You taste so good,” he says

I almost believe he means me.

*****

And Sommer Marsden, whose piece, "She Looked Good In Ribbons," lives in my collection, Love at First Sting. This was my introduction to Sommer's writing, and I was addicted from the first bite. I'm pasting the opening here. This is a piece so drenched in "Do I?" or "Don't I?" that my stomach is tied in knots for West each time I read the piece.

She Looked Good in Ribbons
Sommer Marsden

West stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, rubbed the paper, removed his hand. He shook his head at himself. He was going to rub a hole in the fucking paper if he kept rubbing it like a worry stone.

"Here you go, Mr. Harper."

"West," he corrected the desk manager.

The man frowned. "We have you down as Westbrook Harper. That isn’t right?"

West stifled a sigh. "It is but I’m here for the convention and…we’re supposed to check in under our…working names."

The man, whose name tag read, Blake, immediately flushed. "Of course, Mr. West. I do apologize. I am normally more discreet but the sudden flood of check-ins has me off my game."

West nodded and shrugged. "It’s fine." While he waited for his key, he found his hand returning to his pocket. He was crazy. Certifiable. He should throw out the paper and go back to the airport. Return to normal life. Let this go.

But he wouldn’t.

"…anything else?"

West glanced up at the man’s annoyed expression. He’d been off in space again. Way down deep in his own mind where he could barely hear the outside world around him. He cleared his throat. "I’m sorry?"

"Your key." He slid the key across the marble counter. "Was there anything else, Mr. West?"

He had to clear his throat again and still his voice was slow to come. "Alyssa? What room is she in?"

Tapping on the keys and keeping a neutral expression, Blake checked. "I see here permission from Ms. Alyssa to tell you…Room 213."

At the word "permission," West felt himself go a little weak in the knees. She had made arrangements for him to know her room number. “Thank you," he managed.

“The dinner will be in the Ballroom at seven, Mr. West."

West nodded and practically fled to the bank of elevators. When he stepped in and hit the #2 button, he realized his hand was in his fucking pocket again. He was alone, so he gave into the urge and unfolded the badly creased paper.

W,
It’s not that I want to be trussed up like a turkey or anything. The whole idea of being bound somehow and at someone’s mercy (kind mercy, mind you ;) is thrilling. I guess it shows up in my work quite often. Is there such a thing as soft bondage, I wonder? Ah well, work to do. I have become way too wrapped up in your emails. You’re addictive.
Alyssa

P.S. Hope you can work out the trip to the conference. I can’t imagine meeting all those erotic artists and not meeting you. You’re my favorite after all…

So he had worked it out. Fought with his wife. Spent the money. All to meet this woman who seemed so much like him. He was addictive? That always stumped him. He was a normal man who did normal things. He just happened to be an artist whenever time would allow and sex had always been his favorite subject. So much to explore. So much inspiration. She did the same. And she was addictive. And he was on the second floor.

He stood outside the elevator, refolded the email, shoved it deep into his pocket. He checked the other pocket and heard the cellophane protest at his brutal squeeze. He pulled out the packet and checked them again. This whole damn thing was making him borderline Obsessive Compulsive. Checking and rechecking everything because if he didn’t, this wouldn’t turn out as it was supposed to. The fantasy would become a hideous fiasco he would carry with him forever. He let out the breath he had been holding. They were all there. Five ribbons; hot pink, turquoise, lime green, sunshine yellow, and red. Pilfered from his wife’s craft closet. You sick bastard…He ignored the thought, closed his eyes, called up the use for these ribbons he had been imagining for weeks. Sifted them through his fingers.

“Soft bondage," he whispered. Then he put them away. He turned left for 213 and prayed he wasn’t fucking up his whole life.

*****
See? Nary a cock or a pussy to be found. I could go on. I could list work by Kristina Lloyd, and Jeremy Edwards, and Donna George Storey, and Saskia Walker, and Kristina Wright, and Mathilde Madden, and Marilyn Jaye Lewis, and Stephen Elliott, and Rachel Kramer Bussel, and on and on. These are writers who floor me with their creativity each time I crack the spine on their stories. This isn't to say Anais Nin is not brilliant. This is just my two cent input stating that there's a whole galaxy of other luminaries out there—those who talk cock and those who do not.

XXX,
Alison