Connected Sex

I’ve been struggling lately in what to identify myself as. There’s the whole “labels are subjective” mentality, but if you exist in the world chances are you’ll run into labels. And if you write, you’ll run into a lot of them. For instance, “what do you write about?”

I’ve been saying that I write about “relationships,” which is my healthy euphemism for “sex, sex, sex.” But that’s not all I write about. I’d like to say I write porn, because that’s simple and trashily elegant, but the problem is, I don’t write porn. I write about the relationship between two people, or more, who are having sex with the sex as an extending arm of the relationship. I am not, I repeat, not a romance writer. I don’t use tasteful euphemisms for sex. If my characters fuck, I want to say they fuck, not “she succumbed to the swell of desire as it washed over her like a spring ripe tide,” or some such. If that’s what you write, great. No beef with that. But it’s not me.

I wanted to say that I write intellectual erotica, but that’s not strictly right either. While my training is in writing literary fiction, honestly, I never really got the point of being literary. I mean, yes, literature has its place. And there’s some really amazing stuff out there. There’s also just as much stuff that I read and never had an f’ing clue as to what was going on, let alone how to critically analyze it. (Mostly the Southern and South American writers, but Romantic poets are guilty too.) In my mind, readers need to get what you’re writing about. Hard books should be hard, but if you’re writing erotica, the only thing that should be rock hard is your characters and your reader, not your prose. I have a difficult time getting my lady wood on when I can’t figure out what the hell is going on.

So literary erotica was out.

As is genre erotica, sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, western. I can incorporate these elements, because it seems like that’s what good fiction is doing right now. But if I read another stereotypical vampire/werewolf/succubus gang bang, I’m going to… I don’t know, give up reading as a hobby and stick to burning my nipples while canning or something. (True story.)

Again, if the above mentioned gangbang is your bread and butter, by all means. It’s just not something that I want to do.

Then one day, while I was at my day job and listening to a podcast, (After Dark Radio with Ande Lyons) I realized that what I’m writing about is connected sex. I always thought connected sex was bullshit, until after my last breakup when I started sleeping around rather a bit more than I should have, but found, to my surprise, that when I let go of the desire to have a relationship or anything really meaningful with the guy I was screwing, and instead just enjoyed him for who he was as a person, sex became really enjoyable. Then I met my partner and he and I had the most amazing connection that definitely carries across into the bedroom. Like we just get each other, in just about everything, and have been there for each other through some truly awful shit. And through it all we’ve felt, for lack of a better word, connected, and inspired by one another.

Before, I might have been in a unique situation, because I’m still friends with most of these guys, like can still sit and have a beer together to this day. But it was all positive and made me realize that some relationships, while there’s a connection, might not be meant to last forever. And, amazingly, that’s what I write about: that connection between people, either for a moment or the rest of their lives, that’s what fascinates me and drives me to get out from under the covers in the warm circle of my love’s arms, and go write about other people having sex. Because I don’t write just about relationships, I don’t write porn, I don’t wax literary, I’m not drawn to genre, but I do write about people having engaging, connected, meaningful sex, even if that connectedness and meaning is ephemeral. Sometimes that is what we need too.

Happy reading and writing and keep smiling, it makes them wonder what we’re up to.