Jean Roberta

Orphans

By Jean Roberta

[Note: please excuse me for missing my regular day to post, May 26. I hope this late post doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s.]

Have you written a story, a poem, a play, or some experimental hybrid that doesn’t fit any call-for-submissions or journal guidelines that you know of? Welcome to the club.

The divisions between erotica and other genres seem thinner now than ever before. Romance novels can be drenched with erotic tension and even include explicit sex scenes, although an unspoken rule in the “romances” of the past was that the wedding had to appear on the last page, and sex couldn’t take place before then. Speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, slipstream, steampunk, horror, etc.) can include sex that doesn’t have to obey the laws of the natural world we know. Suspense narratives, including murder mysteries, can include erotic tension as part of the suspense: Will the central characters solve the mystery and/or take their flirtatious partnership to the next level?

While the definitions of genres, per se, seem fairly fluid, every editor or editorial team has guidelines: lots of sex and magic, but no horror. Realistic character development and sex, but no magic. Elaborate world-building, including sexual traditions that would seem exotic to most readers, but no info-dumps. Horror required, but with minimal bloodshed. Violence okay, but no explicit sex.

And there are usually minimum and maximum word-limits which indirectly define the categories that will be considered. An erotic story of under 3,000 words can include one fairly detailed sex scene, but usually no more than one. A story of at least 10,000 words is pushing into novella territory, and therefore it needs at least two complex characters interacting in a plot which is about something besides– or apart from– sex.

It’s very easy to follow a plot-bunny down its rabbit-hole and write something that might appeal to certain readers, but which doesn’t completely fit the guidelines for a collection, website, or journal.

I still have a few orphan stories on my hard-drive which were rejected by the first editors to whom they were sent, usually for very logical reasons.

I know my weaknesses. The editor of a sci-fi anthology said she loved my story, but it didn’t include any technological revelations. (No surprise there. I’ve never had a very firm grasp of either modern technology or the nineteenth-century steam-driven type. I couldn’t explain to a visitor from another planet how I am able to transmit these words through a machine to people living far away from me. My version of the “sci” in “sci-fi” more closely resembles magic. )

Early versions of some of my stories resemble the feet of Cinderella’s stepsisters in the non-Disney version of the story in which they cut off their toes or their heels to fit into the glass slipper, then leave a trail of blood behind them. In a few cases, I’ve been able to prune a potential novel down to under 6,000, 5,000 or even 4,000 words. This usually requires leaving out something that needed to be left in: a character’s motivations or emotional responses, or the juicy details of a sex scene. Improving the story usually requires reattaching the toes or heels (or the heart, lungs, and brain, which is easier to do with stories than with human bodies), even if that means the story will no longer fit into a certain market.

Languishing in my “documents” are three different versions of an erotic lesbian story in which I experimented with viewpoint. The two central characters are so different (but complementary, I hope) that I didn’t simply want to describe one through the eyes of the other, so the story is divided into alternating sections told by the two narrators. This tends to interrupt the plot in much the way a supposedly true story is interrupted when someone offers a different version of events.

(“We met when you were still a barista at the coffee-shop.”

“No, honey, we didn’t really meet then. I first noticed you when we were in the same class at university.”

“You were so innocent. You weren’t a lesbian, and you weren’t into BDSM.”

“I didn’t have much experience, but I knew what I wanted.”

“You were so uptight because of the way you were raised.”

“Excuse me. My parents gave me everything they didn’t have, and they always encouraged me to think for myself.”)

Will any version of my story ever see the light of day? That remains to be seen. I like both the characters, and the way they resolve their differences. I think the sex is hot. I can also see why the divided viewpoint might prevent a reader (or an editor) from smoothly following the rising tension to a satisfying conclusion.

As usual for me, I probably need to expand the story into something longer, in which different sections or chapters wouldn’t look like unnecessary interruptions.

Occasionally, a story will be posted in the “Storytime” list in the Erotic Readers and Writers Association which includes great lines, great characters, great sex, and sometimes a fascinating plot, but something about the whole piece doesn’t gel. In some cases, character motivations look unclear or unconvincing to several of the readers who offer critiques, and in some cases, sex seems to be inserted into a plot without enough preparation. (The usefulness of lube in real life seems relevant here.)

Self-publishing offers a solution to the problem of where to place writing that doesn’t fit neatly into existing categories, and the Excessica site provides a marvelous combination of writer independence with technical support. However, I’m not willing to post a story for public consumption before it seems ripe enough.

I’d like to encourage all the writers reading this not to abandon your orphan pieces. Some of them probably have good bones. Leaving a first draft for awhile before coming back to it can enable you to see what it needs.

Think of it this way: there is no real failure. Some projects are thrown away, when they could have been recycled, and some just haven’t found the right home yet. Some are never finished, for various reasons. You had a reason for writing the first draft, and it might be calling you to come back to it.

Eroticon, Part 4

by Jean Roberta

On the last day of EROTICON: Sunday, March 18, the weather was still grey and sleety, but there was plenty to do indoors.

At 10:15, Mirtha and I passed up Natalia Grubizna on “Designing your sexy-sexy product,” more Kinklab demonstrations, and Cressida Dowling on “Is there a book in your blog?” to hear a Nigerian-British female blogger, Oloni, discuss polyamory.  The audience contributed comments, but we would have liked to hear more discussion of the history of long-term relationships involving multiple lovers, the challenges of maintaining these relationships, and ways to make them work.

At 11:05, we went to hear Jamie Lawson give a personal talk on “Becoming a queer anthropologist.” This speaker explained his early belief (common to many LGBT professionals) that he could keep his professional status completely separate from his general world-view, his sexuality, and his social status as a closeted gay man. His talk on the breakdown of this belief was poignant.

At the same time, someone from the site Fetish.com gave a talk on “Getting it up! How to raise your writing visibility on Google.”

The lunch buffet was as delicious as the one on Saturday. On Sunday, it was scheduled earlier to allow for the five-minute readings from 12:30 to shortly after 1:00 p.m.

At 1:15, we reluctantly passed up Nina Saini’s talk on “The adult industry in the 21st century,” to hear Kendra Holliday on “Shocking the System: When Your True Life Tales Cross the Line.”

Kendra Holliday from St Louis, Missouri, a sex-worker and the divorced mother of a daughter, told her cautionary tale of being publicly persecuted (and this word doesn’t seem too extreme) after blogging in social media about her actual sex life, including her experiences with other people. She talked about being slut-shamed on a blog, “The Dirty,” being threatened with the loss of child custody by her ex-husband, and being fired from her job with a non-profit organization. This speaker seemed surprisingly cheerful, possibly because at its lowest point, her life had nowhere to go but up.  Like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (novel about the public shaming of an “adulteress” in Massachusetts colony in 1640), this woman has survived.

At 2:00 p.m., we heard Lori Smith (a lingerie collector) on “The surprising history of the bra.” As an amateur seamstress, I was fascinated by her illustrated lecture. I had already known that in 1914, an American socialite named Mary Phelps Jacob had applied for a patent for the bra (or brassiere), even though she didn’t invent it. I hadn’t fully realized that the changing shape of women’s breasts under all clothing styles since then (and before then) were largely created by undergarments, or that the invention of rayon from wood pulp (called “artificial silk” or “art-silk”), latex, and lycra were crucial in the development of the bra.

Lori Smith debunked the myth that feminists in the 1960s were “bra-burners.” She explained that due to fire regulations, a symbolic trash-can filled with the trappings of femininity by protesters at the Miss America pageant of 1968 was not even burned.

The talks we missed were by Dr. Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock on “How to give responsible sex advice,” and Michael Knight on “Tech for Blog Success.”

At 3:00 pm, we had to choose amongst three workshops: “Photographing Eroticon” by Molly Moore, “Financial Wizardry for Sex Bloggers” by two Sarahs (Sarah Bryn Holliday and Sarah Jane), and Remittance Girl on longer (self-contained, novel-length) erotic fiction.

We went to hear Remittance Girl, who discussed the challenges of writing erotic fiction which can’t easily be read in one (one-handed) sitting. As she explained, the nature of erotic feelings is that they are short-lived (there is a cycle of arousal and release), and can’t easily be sustained over the course of a novel without boring the reader.

And there have always been cultural and legal prohibitions on publishing sexually-explicit work. RG pointed out that the big publishing platform, Amazon.com, has inconsistently slammed down on erotic publications which are not bestsellers.

She summarized the history of erotic publications, many of which predated the invention of the novel by centuries. She explained that the classics (the poetry of Sappho, the “satyr” plays of ancient Greece, largely destroyed, the first-century Satyricon, The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade) are generally episodic, containing a series of sex scenes. She went on to discuss twentieth-and-twenty-first century works of erotica: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lolita, Crash, Fifty Shades of Grey, all of which are about something besides sex.

RG discussed the “snowflake method” of writing a novel: to build a relatively simple central premise into a novel-length plot by adding complexity to the events, the characterization, the background and setting.

She explained the archetypal “Hero’s Journey,” as defined by Joseph Campbell, in which a central character becomes a hero by being tested: hostile circumstances give rise to cycles of despair, hope, resourcefulness, and psychological growth. She pointed out that many films from the Walt Disney studio follow this pattern.

RG circulated a chart detailing “The Pervert’s Journey,” an erotic version of the hero’s journey. This version of a traditional plot was both hilarious and recognizable. It showed brilliantly how suspense can be maintained throughout an erotic novel through the introduction of elements which on the surface seem to be anti-erotic, including the hostility of other characters, society at large and the “pervert’s” own fears as obstacles to the “pervert’s” self-actualizing search for sexual fulfillment.

At 3:40, we all gathered together into one room for prizes! Molly Moore explained that all the attendees were entered into a draw to win sex products which had been available for sale at the merch tables throughout the weekend. To our surprise, Mirtha and I both won items. Mine, a large clear diamond-shaped vibrator from a company named “Bijoux Indiscrets,” could possibly be passed off as a coffee-table ornament.

After hugs and photographs, we were off to our hotel room to have a quiet supper in the restaurant and pack for our trip home to Saskatchewan on Monday morning.

We wished we could have stayed longer, but work was waiting for us. Our four-day visit to the UK was an unforgettable break from the routine of our lives. 

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Eroticon, Part 3

by Jean Roberta

Afternoon on Saturday, March 17, at EROTICON: Annabelle Knight, author of The Endless Autumn (with some television experience on Channel 5 in the UK), discussed erotica, and more specifically, erotic romance, as a genre of fiction that sells very well, but which critics disparage and few readers will openly admit to liking — as distinct from readers who openly read mysteries on the beach or on public transportation.

This talk was given in a large, packed room. Unfortunately, the speaker’s voice didn’t carry well, and she stood near a pillar. Giving talks to large audiences in large rooms is clearly different from performing for the camera.

At the same time, Miss Eve E was discussing disability and sex work in another conference room, but Mirtha and I couldn’t be everywhere at once. (Next time, we might split up, then compare notes later.)

AND there was a demonstration of vac play going on, followed by Kayla Lords on a podcasting panel.

At 2:30, Emmeline Peaches gave a talk called “Cracking the Whip? Different Approaches to Sex Toy Activism.” What does sex toy activism look like?

Alas, I never found out because we went to a workshop named “Self-Editing Tips and Tricks” by Anna Sky, with whom I had exchanged some emails about the anthology, Truth. She is “the brains behind” two presses: Sexy Little Pages, and Resonance Press. The editor of the anthology, Zak Jane Keir, was there, wearing a toque that labelled her a “DOXY” (the name of a sex toy company) in large letters. The speaker discussed some of the common mistakes made by fledgling writers of sexually explicit work (independent body parts, impossible actions, etc.)

I had brought along three handouts that I had used when I co-led a workshop on grammar for sex-writers with Shar Azade at the first annual conference of the Erotic Authors Association in Las Vegas in 2011. I offered them to Anna Sky after her talk, in case the material might be useful to her. Mirtha was amused by the passion that editors/English teachers/grammar nazis bring to the subject.

Later, there were more “Kinklab” demonstrations, but Mirtha and I felt the need for some rest in our hotel room before the Saturday night social event.

Beginning at 7:30, all the attendees were invited to a pub in NW1, The Edinboro Castle, where we had our own section. The place was packed and noisy (not really our scene), but we were able to order food there. We both had fish and chips, and the food was excellent.

Even though it’s possible to buy “fresh” seafood in Saskatchewan (flown in from a faraway ocean), there is something distinct about the taste of seafood in Britain. It was as amazing as I remembered.

Apparently the original plan was that the crowd from Eroticon could circulate in and out of the pub and the enclosed outdoor space, but the cold weather discouraged that.

We noticed a woman across the table from us sitting perfectly still, and then we saw why. A young woman standing nearby was busily using scissors on black paper to make a silhouette of her model. Silhouette-making is a Victorian art-form that the artist, Alison Russell, learned from her late grandmother, a painter and silhouette-maker for over fifty years. Mirtha and I were impressed by the results, and we asked Alison to make our silhouettes. We learned that she didn’t need to be paid because she had been hired for the event. (For examples of her work, see my silhouette below or check out her website: www.alison-russell.co.uk)

A company named Eropartner was giving out free drink tickets and displaying “Zumio” sex toys which could be won, but there was such a crowd around their table that we couldn’t get close.

I drank Guinness all evening, but I didn’t hear a word about St. Patrick’s Day, and the few attendees wearing green didn’t seem to be doing it for any particular reason.

I found the women’s loo clean and quiet, but when Mirtha went in there after me, she came out looking annoyed. She told me that three women had been fighting over a man in there, and she didn’t stay long enough to find out who won. I had somewhat expected to encounter some alcohol-fuelled English vs. Irish hostility, but instead, sexual competition was apparently the trigger of the evening.

We old women were relieved to go home to bed.

 

Eroticon, Part 2

by Jean Roberta

Saturday, March 17, was a full day at Eroticon. The doors of the convention space at Arlington House opened at 8:45 a.m., with coffee, tea, and biscuits available. Molly Moore gave a brief welcome, followed by a keynote address looking back to Eroticon 2017 and ahead to next year.

With cups of tea (Twining’s English Breakfast for Mirtha and PG Tips for me, which I hadn’t tasted since I lived in England for a year in my youth, 1973-74), we had to decide which workshop to attend at 10:00. Actually, it wasn’t a hard choice, since we knew one of the speakers.

In one conference room, Remittance Girl (an academic) discussed the origins of the Tongan word “taboo” (something set apart), first used in English in 1777, and the history of taboo topics in literature: the discussion or display of behaviour which breaks the rules that control our relationships with each other and the environment. These are the topics which still carry a strong frisson.  

Three activities which have been traditionally taboo and are still largely considered “unspeakable” are incest, patricide, and cannibalism. Fiction about any of this stuff is likely to be controversial. However, taboo-breaking has traditionally been accepted in the ruling class and in a supernatural realm. As examples, the speaker discussed brother-sister marriages in the royal family of ancient Egypt, the Biblical story of Lot’s daughters (who seduce their father in order to have babies), the killing of the ancient Greek god Chronos (or Kronos) by his son, and the Catholic rite of Communion as the symbolic devouring of the body and blood of Christ.

The audience was invited to discuss what is still taboo, and how taboos have shifted over time.  Remittance Girl identified several taboos that seem to be weakening: class and race “miscegenation,“ expressions of female desire, same-gender sexuality, and transgenderism. At the same time, certain taboos seem to be growing stronger, particularly sex involving “underage” participants (although the exact definition of when childhood ends is not the same everywhere), and non-consensual sex. 

There was general agreement that fame, money, beauty, and cleanliness are highly prized in modern industrial society, and Remittance Girl asked whether the opposite of these qualities could be eroticised. For example, she invited us to imagine this proposition: “You’re fucking ugly, and it’s making me hot.” (I thought about how I would respond if this statement were addressed to me. I would probably invite the speaker to flake off.)

In another room, RMGirl gave a talk on “Record keeping in a gender fluid world (and the right to have your past forgotten).” Unfortunately, we could only be in one place at a time.

In a third space, “Kinklab” was going on: demonstrations of safe sex practices. A bed covered with waterproof sheets had been set up for that purpose. Between workshops, we saw the occasional person stretched out in comfortable-looking bondage.

After a break, morning workshops resumed at 11:00 a.m. In one room, Kayla Lords explained “How to make money from your blog without losing your soul or your audience.” In another room, a sex tech panel discussed the future of sex. Kinklab was still going on in the designated space.

Mirtha and I attended Victoria Blisse’s small, intimate workshop on “sex blogging for authors and other shy creatures.” She assured us that brief posts can attract audiences, and that a suggestive photo of an anonymous body part can be as alluring as something more explicit. She encouraged us to take out our cell phones and take photos of each other which wouldn’t be identifiable. I captured the red fingernails of another workshop participant while the Fluevogs on someone else’s feet were attracting attention. I discovered that Ashe Barker, writer of erotic romances and one of my fellow-bloggers on the ten-author blog “Oh Get a Grip,” was there in the room, having travelled from her home in Yorkshire.

We skipped “Vlogging 101” by Hannah Witton, and entered a packed room to hear a lawyer, Neil Brown, give “Essential tips for sex writers and bloggers.”  His legal discussion was geared to a UK audience, but he pointed out that the law in any jurisdiction is open to interpretation, and that citizen boards that have the legal power to classify and ban erotic material can often be reasoned with. As a former member of the Saskatchewan Film Classification Board, I found his talk logical and reassuring.

Then there was lunch! Mirtha and I were impressed that our registration fees covered a buffet lunch on Saturday and Sunday, spread out in the canteen in Arlington House. One table was labelled “Meat-Meat-Meat,” one was labelled “Fish-Fish-Fish,” and one was labelled “Vegetables-Vegetables-Vegetables.” A long shelf held a variety of dessert squares and fruit.

The salmon shishkabobs with sauce were to die for, closely followed by the desserts.

Eroticon, Part 1

I’m home from EROTICON, an annual weekend conference for sex writers, bloggers,  educators, and fans of sex toys (which all need to be tested and reviewed – someone has to do it). It was held in London, England, March 16-18, in Arlington House in Camden, an historic shelter for homeless men which provides resources for the residents to find jobs and regular housing. The building has conference space, and every organization that rents the space is helping to support the shelter.

(My spouse Mirtha, a board member of Carmichael Outreach in Regina, Saskatchewan, brought home a full sheaf of brochures from Arlington House as inspiration for coping with poverty.)

I’ll try to sum up the experience of attending Eroticon for those who weren’t there.  In the lead-up to the event, Resonance Press (one of the sponsors) put out a call-for-submissions for attendees to send in short works of fiction or non-fiction on the theme of sexual truth or honesty. My new story, “Rendezvous,” was accepted. Truth, edited by Zak Jane Keir, was available for sale at Eroticon. The cover image was by Tabitha Rayne, who was also at the event.

Attendees were welcome to read their work during the dessert-and-readings session on the Sunday. I read my very short (under 1K), very Canadian story about staying indoors and masturbating to recover from a breakup, “Hibernation.”  I was amazed at the variety of flash-length stories that were read, including one about body acceptance, and one about a male-on-male encounter which was clearly still raw for the writer. He got two rounds of applause.

On Friday, March 16, there was a meet-and-greet in the Holiday Inn at Camden Lock, very close to Arlington House. (I tried to get an on-line reservation there for Mirtha and me, but by the time I did this in January, it was already full.)

The event was held in the Glass Room, which offered a dazzling view of a canal which reflected the lights of the city by night.

Service at the bar didn’t live up to the view, but the Eroticon crowd was friendly, and we had some interesting talks about sex-blogging as a goal in itself, not simply as a means of promoting  print publications. We met up with Remittance Girl, formerly of the Erotic Readers and Writers Association, who gave two talks during the weekend. (Read on.)

I would have liked to figure out the public transportation system, or even walk through Regents Park to Arlington House from the Danubius Hotel in St. Johns Wood, where we were staying. There just wasn’t enough time. We learned that London taxi drivers identify neighbourhoods by post code (e.g. from NW1 to NW8, or vice versa).

Plus the weather didn’t encourage leisurely walks. We went from the snowy streets of the Canadian prairies to the snowy streets of London.

Stay tuned for my post on the events of Saturday, March 17. (Note: I wore green for St. Patrick’s Day, but apparently this is not a tradition in England. I should have guessed.)

Gatherings

by Jean Roberta

“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote . . Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,/And palmeres for to seken straunge londes.” –
(When April’s sweet showers have demolished the drought of March . . . then people want to travel, and religious pilgrims want to visit strange lands.)

– Geoffrey Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, circa 1380s.

I’m currently making plans to go to Eroticon (annual conference of the erotic arts) in London, England, with my spouse on the weekend of March 17-18, 2018. This will require several plane rides through different time-zones because we live in the middle of Canada. I can’t afford to spend more than a week away from the classes I teach, even with capable grad-student substitutes.

There are too many writers’ cons held every year throughout the world for one writer to attend. Most of them, as far as I know, are held in the U.S., but I’ve heard scary stories about how hard or at least unpredictable it has become for people from other countries—even Canada—to be allowed in under the current regime. So I decided to go to England instead. I’ll probably go to more writers’ cons in the U.S. in the future, after the regime has changed.

Why go to a writers’ conference? Here are some obvious reasons:

– To network with other people in the publishing world, preferably with those who write, edit and publish in one’s own genre,
– To learn more about the crafts of writing, promotion, and negotiation, and to get first-hand news about calls-for-submissions, contests, jobs, and to get a feel for different publishers, trends, and writing groups.
– To promote a personal project.
– To add experience to a resume or CV. (This especially applies to academics.)

Here are some less-obvious reasons:

– To take a trip away from home! Why not?
– To socialize in person with on-line friends.
– To check out a particular city as a possible place to live.
– To breathe polluted air for a weekend, the better to appreciate the fresh air of the Canadian prairies when one comes home. (This reason probably only applies to me.)

Of course, there are downsides to writers’ cons. I consider myself very lucky not to have experienced the kind of drama I’ve heard about from other writers. Here are some disadvantages of going to a con, in ascending order of importance:

– Expense!! It often seems that those who need the most financial help get the least. Academics, especially those who teach literature, composition, or creative writing in some form, can often get a trip to a writers’ con subsidized by their employers, and the more socially-conscious writers’ cons offer their own subsidies, but those who work outside the Ivory Tower and don’t know anyone who could take them in during a con can pay a considerable amount for travel to the site, accommodation, food, city transportation, conference fees, entertainment, and impulse shopping. The cost of a trip can cut into a writer’s writing profits, if any, without producing any quantifiable return on the investment.

– Isolation. This can take various forms, depending on the circumstances. Writers tend to be introverts, and newcomers can find it hard to connect with those who seem successful and connected.

– Ostracism, rejection, sarcasm, confrontation, turf war. This is the stuff of nightmares, and possibly the inspiration for one’s next horror novel. (When given lemons, writers often find ways to make lemonade.)

Writers in some genres vehemently reject other genres. Sex-writers, in particular, have been sneered out of rooms. Romance, which seems like erotica’s closest cousin, is both widely popular and still widely rejected by writers and institutions which claim to be intellectual, avant-garde, or unflinchingly honest about the hell of this world.

Professional rivalry and political in-fighting (of the more-woke-than-thou variety) are additional obstacles that have caused some con-goers to say they will never return.

– Unforeseen disasters. What insurance companies define as “acts of God” (extreme weather, plane and train crashes, accidental fires, epidemics) are more likely to happen to travellers than to folks who follow a routine at home. Deliberate sabotage in the form of bombings and shootings tends to happen more in large cities than in less-populated areas. (Where I live, “terrorist threat” means the possible contamination of the wheat crop.) I assume that writers who already live in large cities have developed a tough-enough shell not to find writers’ cons any scarier than everyday life. And again, lemons can be the raw material for lemonade, as long as one survives.

So there it is. I find the lures of writers’ cons to be more compelling than the possible drawbacks, especially since the university where I teach encourages “professional development” in the forms of readings and attendance at cons. I’ll probably keep going to them as long as I’m able to board a plane.

Chaucer would probably be amused.

When Yes Means Yes

by Jean Roberta

Lately, there has been an avalanche on social media about sexual abuse and “bad sex” (for lack of a clearer term), which is unsatisfying for at least one participant, and is based on miscommunication, even if one person (usually the girl or woman) consents to some kind of intimate physical contact to avoid worse treatment.

All these revelations, some dating back many years, are probably inspiring every woman who has ever had sex with a man to sift through her memories. How much was “bad sex,” and how much was downright abuse? Was any of it based on enthusiastic consent, as in “Hell yes! Let’s go!”

Although I have identified as a lesbian since the early 1980s, and I’ve been faithful to one woman for many years, I haven’t forgotten my heterosexual past. And some of the sex was as delicious as a glass of fresh, cold water on a hot day.

I could swear on the holy book of your choice that in some cases, I was as horny as the guy of the moment, and my orgasms were absolutely genuine. Some of my male lovers were skilled and empathetic, at least in bed. Since I never considered myself very attractive in my youth, I thought some of the sex I got was better than I deserved. That assumption in itself suggests that something was wrong, but at the time, I didn’t blame my male companions for my low self-esteem. I assumed they had nothing to do with it.

As Donna George Storey explained recently in this blog, there is a double standard of sexual behaviour which negatively affects all women. There is an ancient vocabulary of insulting words for women who are assumed to have too much of a sexual appetite, or too much sexual experience. Being labelled a whore, a slut, a skank, etc., is the kind of sexual abuse that usually comes after the sex, even when it has been a peak experience for everyone involved.

Let me introduce you to a healthy young man I’ll call the Viking. (I wrote about him in an earlier version of this blog.) He was proud of his Scandinavian roots as well as his psychic ability. I could believe there was something magical about him because he had more endurance than any man I ever met, before or since. He could keep going all night long, with no rest periods to recover his strength. If my memories are accurate, I never tried to stop him, even when I was exhausted and I had a university class to attend the next morning. I didn’t feel intimidated; I simply found him as impressive as a powerful racehorse.

I was 21 years old and full of energy myself. I was attending university part-time toward a degree in English, and I thought I would probably take Education classes after that, so I could get a job teaching English in the public school system. I discussed my dreams for the future with the Viking, and he found them amusing.

He asked me rhetorically whether I could really imagine myself as a teacher, and whether I would teach high school students all about sex.

I was taken aback, and told him that I would follow the curriculum, though I wouldn’t shy away from sexual innuendoes in literature, such as the ones in Hamlet’s speeches to his girlfriend Ophelia. (On second thought, I realized that Hamlet is also sarcastic and contemptuous to a young woman who hasn’t harmed him in any way.) The Viking always responded to my philosophy of literary analysis with a smirk.

He claimed he could read futures in playing cards as well as in the tarot deck. When he read mine, he never saw me as a professional in any respectable field. He saw degradation and addiction, bad luck and suffering. He implied that I was doomed to a career in the sex business, which would be followed by homelessness and disease once I was no longer attractive enough to attract customers.

I would always ask whether he saw any success for me as a teacher or a writer. He would shake his head and tell me he wouldn’t lie to me. When there was bad news for me in the cards, he felt it his responsibility to warn me.

The Viking sometimes entertained me with stories of his former life in Ontario, where he sold dope and hung out with a biker gang. Once he told me about a memorable session he had with a young woman who was known for her voracious sexual appetite. Apparently she would willingly take on the whole gang, and this gained her a certain kind of admiration, although no one who knew her expected her to live long or happily. The Viking casually explained that she was a nympho, like me.

I tried explaining to him that I didn’t need sex constantly, and in fact I could live without it when I was between relationships, and not feel as if I were starving.

I had told this man that if sex were a sport, he could win a medal in the Olympics. He clearly didn’t feel the same way about me. In fact, the Viking had much more experience with illegal activities and addictive substances than I did, yet I never assumed that his past would have to determine his future.

It was probably just as well that our relationship ended abruptly in the summer I turned 22. My parents were planning to spend a year in England, and I chose to go with them.

I never saw the Viking again, but his influence on my mind lingered for years. Was my sexual appetite unnatural? Did I deserve a horrible reputation? After all, I couldn’t honestly claim he had ever coerced me into sex, so did that mean I was thoroughly depraved? Did I need to spend years in therapy to become “normal?”

I’m glad to say that my life has not been the tragic, downhill slide the Viking read for me in the cards. It’s been more like an interesting hike through a terrain of peaks and valleys. I’m still not sure if my experience with him qualifies as “sexual abuse” as the term is currently understood, but I’d be willing to bet that the mind-rape was all mine.
————-

On Flirting

by Jean Roberta

For most of my adult life, men have told me they are confused about what women want. This question was famously asked long before I was born.

As a result of the recent avalanche of “me too” stories about a spectrum of sexual harassment and abuse, heterosexual men have been asking wistfully whether “flirting” is now considered unacceptable.

I haven’t heard anyone in the “me too” crowd suggest that being casually groped in public is as damaging as gang rape that leaves visible and invisible scars, nor the long-term effects of being murdered. There have been numerous references to a spectrum of abuse ranging from relatively mild to almost unbelievable, yet women who object to actions that feel abusive are accused of lacking a sense of proportion.

None of this is new. The claim that too many women are humorless prudes who want to outlaw all erotic interaction between males and females was made many times when Second Wave Feminism got rolling in the early 1970s.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “flirt” is an intransitive verb which means:

1. To move erratically, e.g. butterflies flirting among the flowers,
2. To behave amorously without serious intent, e.g. a man flirting with every attractive woman he sees,
3. To show superficial or casual interest or liking, e.g. flirting with a idea,
4. To experiment with something new, e.g. a novelist flirting with poetry,
5. To come close to experiencing something, e.g. flirting with disaster.

One essential quality of “flirting,” according to these definitions, is a lack of commitment or serious intent. A man or a woman who flirts is not promising anything beyond the pleasure of the moment. If flirting is generally accepted as a flattering exchange of interest between two (or more) people, then:

-no one who flirts should be accused of “asking for trouble” by appearing to offer sexual service to everyone who sees them. “Flirting” is not a promise.

– no one who flirts is entitled to blame the object of attention for responding positively.

In my experience, the biggest opponents of flirting are heterosexual men. Before I started high school, my father warned me that women “get themselves raped” by flirting with men, especially in bars, and accepting free drinks. I was too young to get into a bar, and it hadn’t occurred to me to venture into one in search of free drinks. However, my father seemed to think I should be warned early. On other occasions, he claimed that “real rape” was impossible to commit.

After I passed through puberty, I began having alarming encounters with guys of various ages. These experiences started out (in my perception) as harmless flirting, a fun conversation. A guy would see me walking past and make a cheerful comment about the weather. (In Canada, this could be “Nice day, eh?” or “Aren’t you glad the temperature warmed up?” meaning it had gone from 40 degrees below zero to minus 20.)

I should probably mention here that I love conversation, and I’m not bored by “small talk” because it is often interesting in itself, and it can lead to longer-term relationships. In my youth, I didn’t consider an offer of conversation to be as dangerous as the offer of a free drink. I’ve usually responded to people who speak to me, regardless of who they are.

This has often turned out to be a mistake on my part. The guy would ask where I lived, then show annoyance when I wouldn’t tell him. He would invite me to his place, and assume I wasn’t serious when I tried to reject the invitation politely. Once when I was coming home from work on a city bus, a guy persistently told me (didn’t ask) that I was going out with him for a drink, although I repeatedly told him I was going home to my husband. After dashing off the bus, I thought it prudent to take a long, indirect route home to avoid bringing trouble to my door.

A word of advice to the confused: grabbing the ass of a person you do not know (and who might not be interested in sexual interaction with a stranger) is not “harmless flirting.” If flirting is defined as harmless by definition, then ass-grabbing is not flirtatious. It is abusive. And to those who think ass-grabbing shouldn’t even be mentioned as part of the spectrum of abuse because it is less harmful than other forms of assault, consider how quickly assault can escalate. Many women know this from experience.

If a woman whose ass you grabbed takes offense, pushes you away, or tells you off, do you feel entitled to retaliate? If a woman whose ass you grabbed doesn’t seem offended enough, do you interpret her passivity as a sign that she wants sex with you as soon as possible? Do you think women who don’t reject your “flirting” fast enough, or firmly enough, are sluts who want you to try harder? Do you think women who don’t want to be touched by men they don’t know are frigid killjoys?

None of these reactions fall into the definition of “flirting.” And if you think flirting should make a glorious comeback, it would be wise of you not to complain that: 1) it’s hard to respect women when so many of them are sluts without shame, and 2) it’s hard to respect women when so many are self-righteous about “boundaries.”

As an example of sexually-explicit but non-abusive flirting, I offer you the following anecdote from my distant past. I was crossing the street to my apartment, where my belongings were half-packed. I was planning to move myself and my daughter into a bigger apartment across town with my first woman lover. This was a milestone event in my life, and I had reached the milestone age of thirty.

A fresh-faced young man who looked like a teenage skater dude approached me, said I looked like a fun person to know, and asked if I would like to come to his place to fool around for awhile. His intentions were clear. I felt flattered, and I couldn’t help wondering if Fate were offering me a chance to change my mind.

I was dressed for moving (old jeans, faded T-shirt), not for seduction. I can only assume that my hope for my future was giving me a visible glow that attracted an unlikely suitor. I thought about trains that pass in the night, or the day.

Accepting Young Dude’s offer would have complicated my life more than I wanted. I told him no, I was involved with someone.

To my relief, Young Dude smiled, let me know he was disappointed, but wished me a nice day. He didn’t demand any information from me, nor did he offer an insult, a warning, or a threat.

Now there was a man who knew how to flirt, as young and inexperienced as he looked. I hope he has had a good life, including lots of good sex.
I never knew the stranger’s name, but I wish more men would follow his example.

The Tantalizing Unknown

by Jean Roberta

Who is the handsome stranger, really? (Anyone who has watched Game of Thrones understands the importance of identity, or birth-status, especially if it has been deliberately disguised.) Why does the tough young woman on a barren planet in the latest series of Star Wars movies have an impressive amount of The Force? Could she be descended from any of the major characters from a generation before?

Mystery, suspense, and ambiguity are the stuff of fiction. Depending on the genre, certain important questions hang over a narrative from the first scene: who are they (or he or she), really? Who committed the murder, and why? Who stole the treasure? Who will fuck whom? How will they do it? Will the seasoned Dom(me) seduce the relatively inexperienced but curious hottie?

Unfortunately, ambiguity and uncertainty are not fashionable these days, at least among editors. When I get editorial advice about a story that has been accepted, but won’t be published until it has been revised to the satisfaction of the editor/publisher, the advice falls into predictable patterns. “You’ve used ‘seems’ three times in this story. It makes your narrator sound weak. Replace it with ‘is.’ Instead of saying ‘She looked worried,’ say ‘She was worried.’”

At some point, I am tempted to declare myself a devout agnostic: someone who doesn’t know whether there is a God or not (or what form that being might take), because there simply isn’t enough proof. I’m also not willing to assume that everyone who has an addiction or a pattern of unfortunate sexual relationships was sexually abused as a child, though some adults definitely were. Even in the real world, I think it’s important to say “I don’t know” if I don’t, and not to clutch at reckless beliefs to make myself sound knowledgeable, or assertive, or confident.

The omniscient third-person viewpoint in literature is artificial. Writing from that lofty perspective, a writer can function as a puppeteer who knows all the characters, inside and out, and can state with confidence that “She was worried,” or “She turned him down because the pleasure she got from manipulating men was like a drug to her.” A seemingly omniscient author can invent characters from other genders or communities that readers from those communities can’t recognize as real. At least the omniscient narrator doesn’t sound weak.

I prefer to write from a viewpoint that feels more natural, which is usually first-person or limited third-person (in which the narrator can only get inside one character’s head or psyche). If the viewpoint character is a servant-girl, she doesn’t have access to the long-term plans of her employers, since they are unlikely to share them with her. If the viewpoint character is a foot-soldier, he can’t know in advance who will win the battle, or even why the general gave an apparently irrational, suicidal order. (For a real-life example of this read “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Lord Tennyson.) Viewpoint characters can observe what they see and speculate on what it means, but appearances are often deceiving.

I like the words “seems,” “appears,” and “looks.” (In one case, when an editor asked me to change the word “seemed,” I changed it to “appeared.”) I also enjoy showing that a narrator’s assumptions are unjustified. In one case, an editor vaguely advised me to “be careful” when writing fiction that might be interpreted as racist. The narrator of my story was modelled on the kind of garden-variety local racists I’ve known all my life, and she learns in due course that her assumption about who is most likely to be a thief and a liar is completely wrong. An author’s world-view is more likely to be embedded in a plot than in the words of an untrustworthy narrator.

I’ll probably continue to write about the way things look or seem, regardless of how many editors advise me to eliminate “weak,” speculative words from my vocabulary. In some plots, the whole truth is revealed in ways that it rarely is in life. In other plots, truth remains elusive. Maybe the butler committed the murder, but maybe he was framed. A second investigation might be required, and this might involve a sequel, or a series of novels. And the ultimate conclusion might not be completely conclusive.

In the real world, our questions aren’t always answered. Even the questions that seemed so pressing in our youth tend to change as we age. Part of the reason why adulthood is often more satisfying than adolescence is because we’re more likely to find a Significant Other and a compatible group of friends once we’ve moved beyond the limited milieu of parents, siblings, and high school. Another reason why independent adulthood often comes as a relief is that we’re less likely to spend sleepless nights wondering if certain other people like us or not. Suspense, ambiguity, and doubt in a Young Adult novel are bound to be different from those qualities in a mystery, a fantasy epic, a dystopian tale of the coming Apocalypse, or an erotic story (or an erotic thread in any of those other genres).

If you, as a writer, have ever used the offensive word “seems,” rest assured that you’ll get no complaints from me. Narratives about what seems—as distinct from what is known beyond a doubt– were popular in the past, and they still are. And the need for speculative language in unclear situations is one thing I consider as solid as a rock.

Of course, rocks change and erode over time, just like beliefs and writing styles that seem permanent. To stay upright, we all need to resist being too rigid.

Coincidence, Imitation, or Theft

by Jean Roberta

This past month, I’ve been thinking about similar book titles, among other things.

My erotic novel, Prairie Gothic (set on the Canadian prairies, where I live) was first written in 1998, when I had more enthusiasm for the game than knowledge of how to write a book-length narrative. During my year away from the classroom, I decided that I had to do something with the file, which had been gathering virtual dust in my Documents since 2006, when the only “publisher” (of the ebook) went bust. After rereading the novel, as though for the first time, I decided to rewrite and expand it rather than delete it.

I sent a proposal and the first three chapters of the revised, 2017 version to a publisher who has always treated me well (Steve Berman of Lethe Press), and he accepted the novel for publication. 

I didn’t consider changing the title, partly because no one advised me to do that. The “Gothicism” of local culture, IMO, is based on contradictions: Canadian politeness and co-operation on the surface, with an underlying history of violence toward the local indigenous population, and hostility to non-English immigrants. As in other parts of North America, rural culture has been characterized by a certain Protestant prudery combined with a roaring sex business on the “wrong side” of town and a secretive queer community. I tried to show all of this in my novel.

The new version of Prairie Gothic won’t be available for awhile. Meanwhile, the amazingly prolific and versatile Mitzi Szereto has launched a series of novels with “gothic” in the titles.  The first one, Florida Gothic, is scary, gruesome, and hard to put down. The local culture includes old Cuban refugees from Castro’s 1959 revolution, a variety of bugs, a variety of drugs (mostly illegal, and very lucrative for the sellers), retirees from other states, poor people with no access to health care, humid heat, and prowling alligators. And a zombie who might have been blessed or cursed by a Haitian trickster god, Papa Legba.

Reading this book, I noticed how differently gothic drama plays out in different environments, as well as in different genres. Mitzi Szereto’s series will examine it in different states; the next novel is titled New Mexico Gothic.  Apparently no book in the series will be named after a region (e.g. the prairies, the mountains, the coasts, etc.).

Mitzi’s series is categorized as horror fiction, and the sex in it doesn’t seem intended to be especially arousing. My novel is categorized as erotica, and the hypocrisy in it is not intended to distract a reader from the sex.

Readers probably won’t be confused by the word “gothic” in titles if they read the blurbs carefully. I just hope no reviewer claims to have been misled.

On a similar note, a fantasy story of mine (set in a desert where a local priesthood tries to appease a dragon-god who supposedly punishes humans for their sins by causing wildfires) has been accepted for a fire-themed anthology, tentatively titled “On Fire.” Meanwhile, writer/editor Rachel Kramer Bussel has been promoting an anthology she edited, On Fire: Erotic Romance Stories (Cleis Press).

I’m sure the editors of both books chose the same prepositional phrase as a title by coincidence, and because it sounds catchy. I suspect the two anthologies have very little in common. I hope the title of one of them can be changed enough to prevent misunderstandings.

I remember when two writers I admire (both fairly brilliant in the genre of m/m erotic romance) both named their novels Personal Demons, and the two books were released at approximately the same time. I’ve only read one, but from what I know of the other author’s work, that novel is probably a whole other saga, not part of a paranormal series.

These coincidences lead me to consider deliberate imitations, borrowing, theft, and misappropriation. Fan-fiction still seems to be a popular genre, and many recent books have been set in the fictional worlds of earlier writers: Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, George Martin. No one seems offended by this, unless I’m missing something.

On the other hand, cultural appropriation is an ongoing source of conflict. Here is a definition that seems fairly standard: “cultural appropriation is when somebody adopts aspects of a culture that’s not their own.” This practice seems especially problematic when a member of a dominant culture (e.g. a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) “adopts” aspects of an oppressed culture: e.g, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, writing about the “history of magic” in North America before the mass arrival of white Christians.

This subject-matter necessarily involves writing about spiritual practices among indigenous peoples (and there were/are many cultures, not just one).  Even though Rowling is known as a writer of fantasy, the people she wrote about have actually existed for centuries, and many have responded to her work by tweeting:  1) We’re still here in the real world, like our ancestors, and 2) Our “magic” was/is as real as the “magic” of pre-Christian Europeans (vilified as “witchcraft” by church and secular rulers), and you got it wrong.

I feel some sympathy for those on all sides.

K. Tempest Bradford describes herself on Twitter as a “Science Fiction and Fantasy writer, media critic, and professional harsher of squee.” She has written a much more reasonable essay on cultural appropriation than I could hope to do. You can find it here:

https://medium.com/@tempest/the-cultural-appropriation-primer-91f1101doe1d

K. Tempest Bradford

In my rambling through Twitter, I also ran across the link to an older interview in Slate magazine with the cosmopolitan writer Zadie Smith, daughter of Jamaican and English  parents, raised in London but currently living in the U.S. 

www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/11/a_conversation_with_zadie_smith_about_cultural_appropriation_male_critics.html

Zadie Smith

In her article, Smith touches on “cultural appropriation,” and the false assumption that peaceful coexistence requires cultural homogeneity. She claims:

“My husband is from Northern Ireland, which is a completely racially homogeneous place, and was for hundreds of years, and they still managed to find the difference between which way you faced an altar, and then kill each other for at least 600 of those years.”

She has a point. Peace and solidarity usually appear somewhere else, or in imaginary societies.

Smith claims that cultural borrowing and mixing appear to be a subversive plot to some, while she simply regards these processes as a fact of life. She doesn’t seem especially concerned about cultural appropriation, and has no interest in trying to police it.

I offer all this material as food for thought. Do you believe there should be no limits on any artist’s imagination? Or does basic respect for other human beings require more self-control than some artists seem to have? Are certain words, titles or trends simply part of the general zeitgeist? Comments welcome.

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