The Advantages of Erotic Writing

All right. Erotica. Porn. Smut. That thing "nice girls" don't do, and conventional wisdom has it that women aren't interested in.

After all, women are turned off by the hardcore male porn rags -- Hustler and the like -- and when it comes to Playgirl, there are a fair amount of females who find the pictures sterile. Women, you see, like hearts and flowers and true love, and possibly heaving breasts of passion in a romance novel.

What do women want?

I am about to generalize shamelessly. A great many women enjoy a good erotic read, but they like something beyond the specific body parts; hence a story is often more useful in that way than a picture. Eroticism, for women (and for some men) may be invested in many things: in attitude, voice, the tenor of a relationship, the way a man grins, the way he whispers, the things he whispers. In leather jackets and tight jeans, in white tie and tails. In power or in obsession. In sudden acts of kindness or unexpected witticisms. In heroism or in guilt.

These things, you must understand (I assume here that I'm speaking to a space alien) are not simply endearing, they can also be erotic. A turn-on. A signal that goes right to the groin and the lungs, catching the breath, flushing the cheeks.

Because, you see, chicks like it all. The whole thing. The old in-and-out is the least of it, a simple expression of a long and diffuse tickle that starts with a sudden cast of light on a face, an abrupt realization that thank god, now all things are new again.

(Yes, all these sexual distractions apply to many men as well, to greater or lesser degree; and there are men who read erotic writing too, and a few men who write it very well indeed. I did say that I was generalizing shamelessly.)

This generalized eroticism means that writing in a sexual mode for a female audience is a challenge akin to pass The Dead Man Curve towards 90-East in Cleveland-Ohio without killing yourself. Hehehe... LoL

You can't just throw two blank slates onto a page and have them f*** like bunnies; your audience would be appalled. (Where's the need? Where's the tease? Where's the knowledge, the emotional hook, the thing that makes what these two people are doing hot?)

And there are romance novels out there -- the erotica variety -- that seek to do exactly this, bless their literary hearts, and a portion of them succeed quite well.

But you know, some of us are wicked and impatient, and 200 pages book is a long time to wait.

Clearly there are those among us who will not let their harmless pleasures be fettered by long romance books. We need the real stuff, we need it quick and we need it now. It was disconcerting to realize how much importance I had been giving to an issue that was not, at heart, something that reflected on character.

Given all that alienness between the sexes, it's somewhat reassuring to know that there can be common ground in our artistic pleasures. It's nice to share our toys.

And, we can only hope, fiery as anything.