Ah, smut stories. I like 'em, and read them from time to time. They’re funny, and I get a lot more out of them than I do out of visual pornography. It’s said that men are turned on by images, whereas women are more turned on by touch and mental/emotional stimulation, which may have something to do with my preference for literary over pictorial smut … And there you have my fancy way of reiterating that I like smut stories.

I have a really hard time suspending disbelief to the extent necessary for me to accept the reality of a porn movie, and magazines usually just crack me up. I mean, whatever. Most of them are geared towards straight men, and if it was just about the boobs, then a person could just see naked chicks by buying a National Geographic. Porn has a different dynamic, obviously. Also, I usually end up being way too concerned for the models/actresses to be able to enjoy the pictures, moving or not.

Funny, I have no problem accepting the realities of non-porn movies. Little wizard boys with magic wands, flying around on brooms? Totally. Grown men crawling on walls and rescuing damsels from mechanical monsters? Bring it. I’ll be completely absorbed and not question a single plot-hole. But show me a movie featuring a woman on a tractor who just MUST BE FUCKED by a transient biker in her daddy’s silo, and I go all Scoffy McScofferton, like “Oh, come on! That would SO not happen!”

Maybe the written stories work better for me because I can invent and alter the realities as I see fit. Maybe I like them because, like so much of what's presented by the Porn World, they’re just so damned funny.

Good erotica is hard to find. Now, I’m not saying that I was a budding Leopold von Sacher-Masoch when I was younger, or that I am one now, because in truth, while I’ve never been a prude, I was a really late-bloomer and very naïve until real late in the game. (Although, if memory serves, I allowed my Barbie dolls to engage in some very naughty stuff. They were all double-jointed, and, due to sexual economics [i.e. my owning several Barbies and only one Ken, making reliance on heterosexual partnering somewhat impractical,] quite openly bi-curious. Those girls did things that would make the raunchiest of Bonobo monkeys blush. And I know I'm not the only former Barbie owner who will admit to that.) But if I had shown the writing habits exhibited in a lot of erotica, my high school English teacher would have bent me over. And not in the friendly way oft depicted in those lame and ubiquitous stories about Stern Teacher versus Catholic Schoolgirl.

So, for any of you who aspire to write erotic fiction, I offer some tips. (God, I'm making myself out to be some kind of porn fiend.)

First, as with any writing, do your best to avoid repetition of phrases, and please choose carefully when electing said phrases to begin with.

There is an over-reliance on comparison of boobs and ass-cheeks to All Things Round. Such as:

GLOBES, or worse, ROUND GLOBES. Most often used in reference to a woman’s ass.

Describing a woman’s ass as “a pair of round globes” is:

(a) redundant, since globes are, by nature, ROUND.
(b) ridiculous, since no part of the ass is spherical, nor would it be at all sexy if it was. On the contrary, it would be pretty freakish and uncomfortable. Asses have some give to them, or at least, they should.

In regards to breasts:

If the only words you can think of to describe breasts are RIPE, YOUNG, FIRM,and/or TAUT, then you’d better go find a real, live pair as soon as you can and squeeze them until inspiration hits, because your writing makes it evident that you’ve never actually seen any boobs in action. And for the love of God, refrain from referring to them as MELONS, especially if the only modifier you can settle on is the aforementioned “ripe.” That shit is tired, y’all.

Oh, my God, the breast-related term that never fails to slay me is “hemispheres.” Much like the round globe thing, describing an erotic heroine’s breast as being a pair of “pert hemispheres” is freakish and inaccurate.

So, take the globe of one of the fictional ass-cheeks. Halve it, if you will, along the would-be prime meridian or equator of that fleshly globe, and there you have a breastal hemisphere. In order for a pair of hemispherical tits to fit on a woman’s ribcage, they would have to be quite small, which is fine, but they’d also look damned funky, like a couple of overturned teacups. If these hemispheres were to be as big as The Porn World wants you to believe tits can be, then they’d have to cover a woman’s entire torso in order to maintain their true, hemispherical shape.

I know I’m being an asshole, but WORD CHOICE, PEOPLE! Any folks unperturbed by crappy writing aren’t going to be bothering with erotic literature; they’ll just wait for it to be made into a movie.

SPEAKING OF ASSHOLE …

I have seen several occurrences of the phrase MOLTEN LOVE TUNNEL in place of that very word.

Hee.

Regardless of one’s stance on the butt sex, “molten love tunnel,” especially in reference to the anus, doesn’t make one horny, it makes one wonder what the owner of that particular love tunnel has recently ingested that’s causing things to be so molten. And a molten love tunnel flanked (hee) by the globes of some woman’s ass just makes me think of two volleyballs on either side of an exhaust pipe.

“He plunged his member into the molten love tunnel.” Member of what? A volcanic spelunking team?

HEE!

And oh, let’s not forget the members. Engorged, purple, throbbing, veiny members. I guess it’s somewhat accurate to refer to the penis as a “member,” since it’s at once attached to yet independent from its owner. That’s pretty funny in and of itself, which could be part (but only part) of the reason why a disproportionate amount of attention is based upon the round globes, ripe melons, and dripping, aromatic love-clams of the female anatomy, as compared to the glistening members and rippling muscles of the males’.

If you have to stretch to find interesting synonyms, just simplify. Describe. Don’t rename. Of course, it’s hard to describe what one hasn’t experienced first-hand, and you have to wonder how many of the erotic stories out there are 100% based on wishful thinking. I mean, I can understand a certain level of outlandishness in fantasy. But there’s fantastical appreciation, and then there’s obsessive, never-touched-a-booby creepiness.

Speaking of that, another favorite aspect of crappy erotic fiction is that they all have big disclaimers that what the story contains is JUST FANTASY, A FANTASY AND NOTHING MORE.

Yes, author, thanks for clearing that up. I was under the impression that you truly had been gang-banged by an entire troop of firemen and their dalmation before being plugged up by the spigot of their firehose and receiving a first-class enema. If that had truly been the case, how exhausting it would have been, especially after your earlier account of the spontaneous lesbian orgy you and the rest of the cheerleading squad fell into, when you decided to use your time in the locker room to shave one another’s pubes. I’m so glad you told me it was fictional. I don’t think I would’ve been able to handle my jealousy, otherwise.

I think I’m done deconstructing crappy erotic fiction now, thanks. I'm not even sure if "deconstructing" is the right term.

But now, for a real-life account:

K was one of my roommates during my third year of college. She was a sweet, somewhat mousy, Early Childhood Education major with little to no self-confidence, and no apparent imagination. Turns out, K was big into writing erotic fanfiction on Buffy the Vampir3 S1ayer sites, and made a couple of friends through her writing.

One was a family man in Australia, the other a toothless woman in Kentucky. The three of them became very ... close, and during spring break our Senior year, Karen and Australia Man went to the woman’s trailer in Kentucky for a little rendezvous.

Last I heard, Karen was living in Australia with the man and his family, working quite contentedly as nanny and love slave.

Putting family values and educational training to work in a faraway country. That’s the American dream, innit?

God, I wish I was making that up.

And now, goodnight. I hope you’ve been well, and had as nice a weekend as I did. If your Monday night was anything like mine, you woke up this morning smelling like men’s cologne, and not because you were trapped in the cosmetics section of no stupid department store.

That’s all I’ll say on the subject, except to add that it’s nice to have a bit of incentive to keep my legs shaved these days. I won't say any more, lest I speak too soon.

Sweet dreams!

~ Last Five Entries ~

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

One-Armed Paper Hanger Earns her Wings - 07.29.05

Sugar & Lemon - 07.28.05

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