It
A lot has been written about “it”. And a lot has been written about writing about “it”.
Many people can’t understand sexuality in literature. They can’t. Sexuality is primal and visceral and touches us in the most intimate places…our minds. And as most people know, no one is without neuroses when it comes to sex.
I’m reading a book right now by an especially confused connoisseur of sex literature. The book is called “101 Best Sex Scenes Ever Written“, by Barnaby Conrad (yes the name should have tipped me off.)
I was expecting a literary sexual romp with promises of excerpts from Miller, Nin, Hemingway, Updike, Roth, Nabakov…
What I’m getting, however, is all of the above, mingled with the author’s clear and distinct puritanical penchant for seeing in his mind’s eye, the couple walking into the bedroom and the door closing in his face.
According to Conrad, the best sex scenes…aren’t. As quoted from the book after a particularly tame sex scene by author James M. Cain, Conrad writes:
“Does the reader need any more than we did plenty? Most people have done plenty in a car at one time or another and can easily fill in the blanks.”
Conrad seems to think that it reflects superior skill as a writer to insinuate, use innuendo and imply rather than talk about “it” in detail.
Well, sometimes it does. And sometimes the story calls for more. Let me repeat: THE STORY calls for more.
Writing erotically and sexually is not always erotica. It is not always intended to titillate. It is not always intended to signify the beginning of a “meaningful relationship” (see genre romance–usually the last chapter, and genre…well, practically anything–usually in the middle of the story before forces beyond the protagonist’s control threaten to tear asunder what was co-mingled in her bed the very day before). Yes, sometimes sex in writing, as in life, means more than one, singular thing.
I write about life and sex is a part of life. I used to write erotica, primarily to titillate (my bank account). I’m not ashamed of this. But then I backed off of sex entirely because I didn’t want to be pegged as an erotic writer masquerading as a regular old novelist. But I couldn’t get away from sex. It was always….on the table, so to speak. In my latest novel, The Rub, due to be released sometime next month, sex is a huge theme. Themes and motifs are different than simply gratuitous sex. Many people can’t see this, as I rant on this blog.
Sex is a metaphor even while we’re doing it.
It can mean, among other things:
I love you.
I want you.
I need to feel loved.
I need to be wanted.
I'm lonely.
I want to be closer to you.
I want a commitment.
I was wondering what you kissed like...
I’m sorry.
I'm counting this toward your total monthly sex allowance.
This doesn’t even come close to the myriad of meanings sex has for us. And no one assimilates one single thing from a single word. So imagine an entire book of words and how, strung together to form a cohesive story, it can take an individual, with all of his or her neuroses, to beyond and back when it comes to sex.
I’ve read some hot scenes in my life. I’ve written some hot scenes in my life. Some are explicit; some are implied, but none were gratuitous–even in my erotica, ironically. The story must come first. Even in erotica, people.
To say that the only good sex scenes are subtle is to cut out some of the greatest sex scenes in the history of literature. Those who are too provincial and austere to enjoy the more ribald, animalistic, human side of sex should avoid my books and, as I mentioned above, many other authors who felt and feel as though the reader, for the sake of the story, must feel every thrust, every pulse and every bead of sweat.
Like great writing, great sex is nuanced and filled with layers and layers of meaning. When sex is a meaningless collision of bodies in real life, it holds little interest to those who seek something more, something deeper. This holds true for sexual writing. If you read a sex scene, find the nuance, the meaning, the metaphor, then you may learn about the characters, the motifs, the themes of the book in a way that you can’t via a tame implied scene.
But if you find yourself peeking at the words through your fingers or clenched teeth and disgust, then perhaps the more Jane Austen you ought to read. Nothing wrong with Austen, but in her writing there are many closed doors at which you must stare.
As an afterthought, might I suggest a passage from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls–easily one of the most beautiful, sexual and, ahem, moving scenes in literary history:
“Well, then. Oh, then. Oh, then. Oh.
"Then there was the smell of heather crushed and the roughness of the bent stalks under her head and the sun bright on her closed eyes and all his life he would remember the curve of her throat with her head pushed back into the heather roots and her lips that moved smally and by themselves and the fluttering of the lashes on the eyes tight closed against the sun and against everything, and for her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color.
"For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.”
***
Oh, indeed.
So enjoy; enjoy doing it. I mean writing about sex, of course.
