Remittance Girl: Erotic Fiction & Other Stories

Pattern Passion

2009-07-14T16:55:00.003+07:00

He was a three, I realized with a little shiver. A metal-legged spider scampered up the ladder of my spine and curled itself into a cold, tingling ball just beneath the back of my skull. A perfect, perfect three. As humans, we like threes, but rarely had I met such a dedicated one.

He got on at North Acton, travelling East at 6:33 every weekday morning and, as far as I could tell, he started doing this on the third of March. He chose the third compartment from the end of the train, picked the third seat from the door on the left hand side. He always wore a suit jacket with three buttons, and had triple-eyelet black oxfords on his feet. Nicely shined, I might add.

What clinched it for me was that, after watching him for several weeks, I noticed that when the third seat on the left hand side was occupied, his body language altered. He wouldn't sit elsewhere. He just hovered, waiting until it came free and then he'd snag it.

The days piled up, and I grew to anticipate the arrival of his threeness. As the train pulled into North Acton, adrenalin flooded my bloodstream, my nipples seized and my cunt started ticking like a clock. I'll admit that I attempted to lure him by exhibiting a bit of threeness myself, just to see if he'd notice. But he had an annoying habit of plunging into a paperback novel the minute he sat down.

After 24 days of consecutive, gorgeous, elegant workday threenesses, I was in love. In a bold move, I decided to take his seat.

When he boarded the train, the subtle but perceptible physical tension caused by my disruption of his pattern was thrilling. By the time we reached Notting Hill Gate, I nearly relented and relinquished the seat, but I clenched my teeth and held my ground, learning to enjoy the sharp spikes of anxiety that forked off his body like a Tesla coil. Just before we pulled into Bank - the station he got off at - his eyes met mine with a look of such pure hatred, it sucked all the air out of the train compartment. I almost came right there on the tastefully patterned grey upholstery.

Although it was normally my habit to ride the underground for a further two hours, I couldn't hold out that long. Alighting at my usual stop, I ran home, and spent the rest of the morning producing imaginary porn in which he stroked his cock in increasingly frenzied sets of triplets. I frigged myself raw, matching his waltzing bouts of masturbation. Of course, I could have stopped at three, or six, but nine orgasms seemed the most appropriate number, a celebration of the triptych in the most sincere sense.

The next morning, my heart raced all the way from Ealing Broadway to North Acton. I usurped his seat and waited, trying to tamp down steamy visions of him pulling out his cock and ejaculating on me in a fit of pique. The minute he boarded the train, he noted the occupied seat with an audible huff. He caught my eye again, this time with a more measured expression of grave disappointment, and tried to pull my gaze, with exaggerated urgency, to the empty seats on either side. I pretended not to notice.

After some minutes of intense glaring, he bent a little forward and, in a low, gruff voice, said, "Would you mind moving one seat over?"

What I really wanted to say was: "I love your threeness, please fuck me!" But I didn't. "Not at all," I replied, trying to sound breezy, and shifted to the right, melting between the legs as he settled next to me.

Did he know he was a three? I wondered. Pulling the ubiquitous paperback out of his briefcase, he began to read. I closed my eyes, letting the train rock me, allowing my mind to plunge, over and over and over, into lewd pools of explicit threenesses. My reverie was only interrupted when his arm brushed mine, as he bent forward to put his book back into his briefcase. His stop was next.

Gathering up my courage, in the middle of the tunnel, as I heard the train begin to brake for Bank, I touched his arm, purposefully, three times. He looked confused, slightly embarrassed. I didn't say anything, or look at him. Diligently, I stared ahead at the mirror that pretended it was a window in tunnels. As it turned back into a window, sliding into the station, I watched him get up and leave the train.

That day, I didn't allow myself escape. I rode the train as usual and tried to look for other patterns. I spotted lots of other threes, but fours and fives and sixes eluded me. Only then did I realize I'd become so obsessed with his threeness, I had stopped being able to recognize any others. This, I admit, was disconcerting.

It took three more morning encounters before he touched me back. In the tunnel approaching his destination, with his nose still buried in his book, he moved his thigh until it touched mine and pressed it three times. The incident was so powerful, I got off at Liverpool Station, quivering, and availed myself of the privacy of a stall in the ladies public toilet.

The following day, before we'd even reached Marble Arch, he crossed his arms over his chest and, holding his book in front of his face with one hand, touched my arm three times with the fingertips of the other. My pussy flooded. Just before Bank, I responded, nudging his leg with my knee.

Unable to hold my tongue anymore, I turned and whispered, "You're such a three."

His eyebrows rose as he carefully closed his book. For a moment, he had difficulty speaking. Then he swallowed and said, "I take the 4:20 train home."

Enter Flesh

2009-07-13T13:02:00.002+07:00

Words
enter flesh
melting into pores
puncturing plumped skin
seeping through swollen folds
insinuating themselves between
clutched fingers
pursed lips
crossed legs.

One
word
unlocks
all those
closed places.

I
was sure
I'd locked up
tight for the night
but I was wrong.

"The Other Side" Podcasted & Smutty Stories by EllaRegina

2009-07-12T23:16:00.006+07:00

Nobilis Read, of Nobilis Erotica Podcast, has made an animated and very entertaining version of my erotic satire "The Other Side."

If you'd like to read along with it, the original story is here.

Please take the time to listen to some of Nobilis' other wonderful pieces of audio erotica. He's got a special touch when it comes to erotic sci-fi. I do recommend the "Cheese", from the Awesoment series.

* * *

Also, this week, since I seem to be woefully unable to produce any smut of my own, I'd like to introduce you to another erotica writer, EllaRegina, who defines her work as "literary erotica, often with a surreal element. Quirky, filthy yet refined." This is actually a very accurate description of it. There are a number of pieces of her writing on her blog.

She won the Rauxa fiction runner-up prize in 2007 for "The Lonely Onanista", which is truly quirky and brilliant. And the story of how the story got written is a delight in itself and she recounts it in her interview over at Sex, Food and Writing.

1:01 PM: I walk down to the river

2009-07-08T17:55:00.006+07:00

Past the old buildings, through the grove of tamarind trees stirring in the midday silence. Across the broken paving stone path by the hibiscus bushes. They hiss with drowsy insects and weep their choking sweet scent to invite more.

Now, in the brutal heat, the cricket field is deserted. Grasshoppers leap in the wake of my strides across the acid green grass leading down to the river’s edge. I drink in the hot, humid air that smells of fertility and rot until my lungs are bursting.

And then I scream.

And scream.

And scream.

And scream until my throat is bloodraw and my chest threatens to implode.

Here in this vacuum.

Here in this killing jar.

Here on this specimen board, stabbed through the thorax with a pin of my own making.

I scream until my body knows it is useless, until the thing that is screaming isn’t me anymore. The river snatches it away and carries it off to the sea.

One morning, a few years hence, you will turn on your tap and, in that first spray of water, hear the faint sound of a woman's cry. You’ll dismiss it as a figment of your imagination, and wash the sleep from your face.

Burn Me in Effigy

2009-07-08T10:45:00.000+07:00

On the other side of the thick safety glass of time and space, her skin smolders like mine. Her mouth is firestarved, her singed fingers clutch in the superheated air. Regard the node of each segment of her reptilian spine arching with desire, curling in your heat.

When it feels like no amount of saliva, of wetness, of blood can quench this beautiful and terrible conflagration.

Please, burn me in effigy.

Shadows & Mirrors

2009-07-07T19:50:00.007+07:00

How do I begin to tell you about Bangkok? Well, the Thais don't call it Bangkok; they call it Krung Thep. It's hot and hideously overcrowded. It can be brash and intensely sleazy one moment, and heartbreakingly poignant the next - often it's both at the same time. I can't really explain the place. I have to paint it for you in a series of vignettes.

* * *

It's dusk. I sit at a tiny outdoor cafe in a narrow alley. Across the street the katoeys (ladyboys) are crowded in and around the salon, getting their make-up done. I've never seen so much beauty, so much vanity and so much existential angst in one place. 'Candy' sits with me, glossing up her slutpink lips.

"I have new breasts," she says, giving me a smirking grin. "Wanna see?"

"Yes, sure."

"Good, because it take a girl to know if they look good." And with that she unbuttons her skimpy shirt across the table. The breasts are petite, perfect for her. Beautiful, with happy, nutmeg-coloured nipples. "Touch them."

"Ah, they look great. Wonderful." And I mean it. I'm just a little shy about invading her space.

She grabs my wrist and splays my palm over one new breast; her feral colgate-white smile flashes in the dying light. "Squeeze."

I give it a hesitant one, then a bolder caress. "It feels beautiful. Just right." And politely withdraw my hand. I can tell she's pleased with my reaction.

"You have a nice touch. You don't squish them. Western men make them hurt."

"Maybe because I have breasts myself."

"Are you a lesbian?"

"Only occasionally."

"Now?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm free this evening. We could go to your hotel."

I smile but shake my head. "I'm sorry. I've got things to do this evening." I don't, and it's not as if she doesn't appeal to me, but there's something sad about her eyes; it's an infectious sort of sadness. Tonight, I don't want that.

"I have a cock, too. But not for long."

"Who's paying for your operation?"

"The man who squeezes my breasts too hard. Come on, I know you're not busy."

"I am. I'm sorry."

She gives me a smile, the sadness in her eyes has run down her cheeks and painted her smiling pink lips with ennui. "I'd like to use it. Just once more, before it goes."

* * *

'Do Ya Wanna Funk' is blasting out of massive speakers hung from the low matte black ceiling. The long oval stage is empty but for the confetti of a thousand tiny coloured light spots that jump and swirl. A broad winding staircase at one end of the stage is packed with men in tight white boyshorts. They are talking to each other, giggling, emptying their water bottles onto each other's chests and crotches. Some are masturbating themselves to tumescence. As the music changes, they stand and, in some sort of choreographed regimentation I'm not clear about, they stream onto the stage, toes to the edge of it, facing outwards.

Each man has a small red plastic lozenge pinned to his shorts: order by number manflesh. Some dance sinuously, some just look down at the people in front of them and smile invitingly.

Most of the audience is male. This, after all, is "Dream Boys" and the clientele is primarily gay. But across the stage from me sit three Japanese women in a pastel palette of twinsets; their strings of Minamoto pearls gleam like passive teeth at their neat necks. Next to me is a sweet-looking, curly-haired blond man from Iowa.

Even over the throbbing music, I can hear him chanting, "Fuck, I'm in heaven. I'm in heaven. I'm in heaven."

The men on stage move every minute or so, and the view changes: bronzed and muscular, coffee-coloured and tattoed, slim and sinuous and...oh, quite clearly cut. I know this because he's kindly taken his cock out to show me. I stare for a bit and then look up at his face.

"Want me?" he yells over the music. "Number 28."

I blush and look at the Iowan. He laughs and pats me on the shoulder. He leans close to my ear and explains that the bar fee - the money you must pay the bar to take the man for the night is 4,000 Baht - about $10 USD. Then, he explains, you pay the man about 5,000 Baht on top of that for his services.

"I...I can't do that," I stutter back. But even as I spit the words out, I'm wondering if I could.

The male wheel goes round and I am faced with number 46. He has a cobra tattoo, its flared hood and red eyes stare at me from between flat, coffee nipples. It's tail is looped and coiled over the man's taut belly and continues down below his.... yes, oh dear, down go the briefs, thank-you; that's elucidating... ends at the root of his cock.

For a brief moment I imagine his inked body undulating above me. That flare-hooded cobra writhing and dipping. Without my knowledge, my hand reaches for my gin and tonic and feeds it to me; it's only when I taste the juniper on my lips that I realize.

The parade goes on and on and on. They're all erect and either pretty, or muscular, or brandishing a bit of rough - sometimes all three. It's like standing if front of the jam display at the supermarket. There are just too many choices and breakfast is over.

The parade snakes back up the stairs and the floor-show begins. There's some Thai classical dance performed in drag and a strange comedy routine that is conducted all in Thai, but it doesn't matter because the two hostesses are a cross between drag queens and demons - they're raucous and broad gestured and most of the jokes are filthy. The hand gestures really say it all. After the katoeys from hell leave, a bevy of the beautiful boys come down and soap each other in onstage showers while artfully performing unproductive fellatio. It's funny, sexy and culturally contextual, all at the same time.

The Iowan and I are fast friends by the time the floor is squeegeed dry and the parade of manflesh starts again.

"Are you going to have one?" I ask.

"Yup. Number 63."

"Why did you choose him?" I don't even remember a number 63, but then there were a lot of erect cocks winking at me and my memory is jumbled.

"Hairless chest, pierced nipples, kind of slim, long hair."

"Oh." Now I remember. "Yes, he was definitely very attractive."

We all pile out of the bar at the same time, into the riot that is Soi Twilight. Me, the Iowan, and the beautiful bought boy. Well, he's not really a boy. At a guess I'd say he's about twenty-five, but he's definitely bottom material.

"Have a nice night," I say to the couple.

"Come with us. I'll do him, and then he can do you. It won't cost much more."

The long-haired beauty nods his head and gives me a lopsided grin. "I like girls."

"No. Thanks. But thanks."

"You shy?" asks the Iowan.

"No. I just... I've never thought about buying sex," I lie. "I'm not sure how I feel about it."

The Iowan laughs and grabs my hand. "Come on! It'll be fun."

"Can I just watch?"

"Sure."

So I go with them. The Iowan's hotel is swank; it's just off Sukumvit and must cost more than $200 USD per night. The room is cool; the traffic outside whispers its urban presence. There is no hesitation of the part of either man. No awkwardness. Just plain, straightforward lust. They suck each other off for a while and then the Iowan, whose name is Sam, fucks Son, the Thai man, with cheerful abandon. It's all really very jolly. Everyone comes, condoms are disposed of, kisses are exchanged and, by two o'clock, I'm standing outside the hotel on the quiet street with Son.

"I like girls," he repeats, looking at me as I look for a taxi.

"I know you do. You said so before."

He slides his arm through mine. "We go back to your hotel."

I don't feel like fucking. I especially don't feel like fucking a stranger. But the warmth of his skin feels good. Not horny good, just human good.

"Just to sleep? Will you come just to sleep?"

He laughs. "Okay. 1,000 Baht."

"4,000 Baht. No sex, but you have to eat breakfast with me."

He shrugs at the madwoman. "Sure."

So we do.

Thought Crimes & Clarifications

2009-07-07T07:00:00.002+07:00

It has become clear from some of the reactions to posts I've made in the last few weeks that I need to clarify my positions on a number of issues. I get tired of repeating myself on this, so I'm writing this as a reference post that I can direct people to.

1. I think there is a WORLD of difference between what people fantasize about and what they actually do.

2. If you have a difficult time understanding this difference, you should not be reading my work.

3. I don't hold an opinion what proclivities may or may not be considered 'mental disorders'. I do know that homosexuality was, until very recently, assumed to be and classified as a mental disorder and, because of this, I question the reliability of these designations.

4. I do NOT condone the making, posting, downloading or viewing of child pornography. I condemn it - both morally and legally.

5. I do not condone rape. I condemn it. The stories that I have written that include rape - sometimes eroticised, sometimes not - are fiction and fantasy. It does NOT follow that I am ambivalent about forced sex or rape in reality. I condemn it (again.)

6. I assume, if you have clicked past the warning page, that you have reached the age of majority in whatever place you live, and that you are sane enough to take responsibility for your actions.

7. My stories are not intended as how-to manuals, life-style guides or psychology textbooks. I am not a psychologist, sex therapist or anything else that would qualify me to suggest how you should live your life.

8. If you read something in my work that you find offensive, please be responsible enough to stop reading. The appeal of my work is not universal nor is it intended to be.

9. As a woman, I have inherited the burden of thousands of years of social, religious and sexual oppression. My understanding of self, my agency, my language and my sexuality were born, molded and twisted by that oppression. I am happy to have a discussion on why I write what I write, but I will not tolerate being told what I can or cannot write about.

10. I am not perfect and I do not exercise perfect judgment. If you assume I am, or that I do, please leave.

Some of you may find this post very patronizing. I apologize for this, but I thought it was important to make myself extremely clear on certain issues.

Beautiful Losers - Ongoing

2009-07-06T08:56:00.004+07:00

For those of you waiting another chapter of Beautiful Losers, fear not. I have not stopped writing it - it will continue and will end. In fact, some of you were insightful enough to sense it is coming to a close pretty soon. It is, and I want it to be good. This is why I'm taking my time with it. By my estimation, there are three chapters left to go. No, I won't rush it. I did that with The Waiting Room, and consequently I find the ending too abrupt. I won't be making the same mistake again.

Other People's Kinks

2009-07-06T07:02:00.002+07:00

There is a very good essay over at Kristina Lloyd's blog on The Pleasure of Degradation. It got me thinking about other people's kinks - you know, the ones you don't have. It's funny how viscerally we react to a sexual kink that isn't our own.

It's not like food: "Oh, you like mashed potatoes? Hmm... Not me." Or taste in movies: "I love films where things blow up." "Eh, not so much."

Very often and, for a lot of people, their reaction to a kink that lies outside their own sexual portfolio is: "Fuck, that's disgusting, wrong, perverse." And it doesn't just stop there. We start making judgments on the whole of someone's character based on what they like to do in bed. Of course this isn't new. It wasn't long ago that a great proportion of the population was convinced that every gay man was a dangerous pedophile, a coward in battle, and generally unreliable.

I'm going to own that I am, in my less lucid moments, gripped by the same capacity to make these really stupid judgments. I tend, after my initial jolt of non-understanding, to force myself to think neutrally, and eventually I do work my way into an interest, intellectually at least, of what the allures of said alien kink might be. But it certainly isn't instantaneous, and for that I am ashamed.

What I love about erotic fiction is that it gives you time to grapple with the heat of that initial repulsion. If it's well-written, the writer will offer you some insight into what makes the kink erotic. I find a lot of fetish writing I come across very annoying. It reads like masturbation, not an invitation to the dance, because the writer assumes you have the same proclivity as they have. And this completely locks out anyone without that fetish, and pretty much ensures you aren't likely to develop a taste for it. Bad fetish writing doesn't tell you the story behind the fetish. Good kink and fetish writing, however, can draw you right in. I posted a story the other week about watersports that I felt was a perfect example of this. It is still very unlikely that you are going to rush out and find someone to try it with, but in the play-space of the mind, it does give you a larger pallet for your fantasies.

The other thing Ms. Lloyd writes about is her feeling that a rejection of the kink she's writing about is a rejection of her own kinks. I have read Ms. Lloyd's "Asking for Trouble." It's a very well-written exploration of a need for sexual humiliation and degradation. This wasn't a kink I came to the book with, and I haven't left with it either. Nonetheless, the attraction of it, the mechanism of the sense of freedom it triggers, the thrill of the transgressive are all very, very well painted. I 'get' the eroticism of it even if it doesn't quite hit and sit at cunt level.

Meanwhile, I have my own set of kinks with their attendant set of social judgements. I'm an addicted voyeur, have a huge taste for non-con and a bit of an ageplay fetish. The last two have brought some rather strident criticism down on my head. There's a certain breed of feminists who seem to think that my non-con kink somehow validates the actions of rapists and violent men. The age-play kink got me on Australia's banned internet sites list and some extremely nasty emails accusing me of promoting pedophilia. Funnily enough, the voyeurism doesn't seem to bother anyone. I gather that's because I'm female; if I were male and admitted to it, I'm sure I'd be in for a barrage of shit.

I guess I wanted to make two points with this post. First, a book about a certain kink is not an instruction manual; it's a piece of fiction. You can like it or not, keep reading or close the book / screen/whatever. But the responsibility for the consumption or non-consumption of the text lies with the reader. Readers need to understand that they are responsible for what they consume.

The second point is that making assumptions about the the character of the writer based on the kinks they are writing about is just plain unfair. The vast majority of us are law-abiding, socially conscious and responsible individuals who have lives that are larger and much more complex than might be reflected in our fiction, and it's a big mistake for a reader to assume they are looking at the entirety of a persona in by opening the covers of a book.

Head on over to Oh Get A Grip!

2009-07-05T09:26:00.003+07:00

I have a guest post over at "Oh Get A Grip!" on the subject of "Killing your Darlings".

Hence no posts this weekend.

Words on the Wire

2009-07-03T21:56:00.003+07:00

I've never actually done a blogpost shitfaced, and after all the 'hiding behind fiction' I can now reveal myself to you in all my splendidness:

You are real.
With real lives.
Husbands, children, lovers.
When you walk through air, it moves.
You touch and are touched.
You scream and pray and whisper
into someone's ear.
And they are there
in all their corporeal glory
to hear you, in all yours.

I am
just words
on the wire.

Wow, too

2009-07-03T14:00:00.003+07:00

I rarely do this. I'm not terribly visual, but I got a twitter notice from Kristina Lloyd and so I nipped over to her site to see what she was about.

Oh, I'm terrible with names and I found that this is THE Kristina Lloyd. The one who wrote the very, very hot "Darker Than Love," which gave me many hours of masturbatory amusement. Her villain was cruel, raunchy and delicious - I highly recommend the book.

In any case, she had THIS on her site. I just had to share.

Yes, I know he's beautiful and usually that puts me off, but it's the mode of congress that did it for me.

Mm.

Hope you enjoy it too.

Okay, Have to Say It.

2009-06-30T20:21:00.004+07:00

I've held my tongue long enough. I've been understanding. I realize that writing erotica is NOT everything (well, I have played with the idea intellectually, at least). But it's a fucking, crying, bastard of a sin that Mike Kimera absolutely refuses to write any more erotica.

Yes. I know this post will piss you off, Mike. I know you'll feel it's an embarrassing dishonourable act of impoliteness that I simply can't respect your wishes. But you know what? Fuck it. In this regard, I have no shame. You are the best erotica writer I have ever read. No matter how hard I work at it, I know I will never write half as well as you. It just fucking kills me to think of all the stories you might have written that will only ever exist like stillborns floating in the formaldehyde on my imagination. (How's that for a bit of purple prose?)

For the rest of you, who have not read Mr. Kimera's work, take some time to read through the linked stories and THEN tell me I'm an impolite bitch for kicking up a fuss about his retirement.

Nadica
(Scroll down the page a bit)

In Jack's Hands
(Scroll down the page a bit)

The 'G' is Silent

Fucking Ugly

Paying For It

The Last Taboo

Soft Option

Other Bonds than Leather

I Want to Watch you Do It

There's more out there. And, whatever you find, you will never be sorry you took the time to find it. Not once. He has also published a considerable number. His site has links to where you can purchase them on Amazon.

The Bell - Tales of the Mumbai Coven

2009-06-30T00:18:00.002+07:00

This is the continuation of the story of Calum McNeill. I do hope I don't need to warn you that the story contains violence. Vampires aren't nice people.

The tears, of which he'd seen an ocean's worth, seized his feelings in an unpleasant and unfamiliar way. "Run along," he said, a little more tersely.

"I'll do you for free," she said softly, stepping closer to him. "I ain't got nowheres to sleep. The cheapest doss is full."

Calum could not understand why he hadn't walked away already, but something kept him. "I've just given you sixpence. That should get you some place warm."

She tightened her lips, giving her the aspect of a small child finding courage, and glanced sideways. "That goes to the landlord for letting me catch you up at the bar," she whispered, one fat tear sliding over her reddened cheek. She sniffed. "Buy us another gin, won't cha? I might be ginger, but I'm nice and tight where it matters."

It was the desperation, the pointed frankness and the fear she kept so well hidden beneath the waif-like exterior that made his cock twitch. Walk away, he thought, there are a million like her, but the steady pulse in his groin didn't agree.

Continue reading: The Bell : Tales of the Mumbai Coven
If you're new to the site, and would like to start at the beginning, click here

The Semiotics of Semen

2009-06-29T14:37:00.006+07:00

A post over at AlexSuze on Bukakke got me thinking. Semen is semiotically heavy - especially in erotica. Yes, come on, admit it! Cum isn't just cum. The load, to put it coarsely, is loaded.

I've heard some men be very disingenuous about this, and it annoys me. "It's just semen!" they wail. Either they're so stupid to have given it no thought, or they're being nauseatingly coy.

I'm not going to get into the actual physical components of semen. You can read that here, if you're interested. But it is the prime carrier of male genetic information. That in itself makes it powerful, symbolically. All the accumulated genetic details of all your ancestors just ended up on someone's tits. Don't pretend that doesn't matter.

It gets more interesting from a cultural perspective. The Old Testament rates semen on the same level as blood in terms of problematic fluids. Problematic because they are at once life-associated, and can render a person ritually unclean for performing sacrifice in the temple. Plus there are the strict prohibitions against wasting it on fallow ground. And yes, no matter how beautiful they may look to you, my tits are definitely fallow ground.

With the rise of Christianity, it got stranger. If sex for anything other than procreation was lust, then the more permanent physical manifestations of it must also be wrong. What is that sperm doing outside your wife's womb? Put it back in, immediately! Disgusting!

The only reason why Christians don't have the same hang-ups about female effluvia (lubricant) is because most priests knew fuck all about it. In fact, you just try and google the components that make up girl juice: good luck. You'll have problems even pinning down a search word.

But... back to the topic. If semen is ritually unclean, an artifact of lust, and the bearer of your genetic identity to boot, then buddy, it matters. And where and how you use it matters too.

Semen plays a significant semiotic role in many of my stories. I chiefly use it the way most erotica writers do, as evidence of desire sated. But I also love the purely sensory aspect of it: that hot, wet streak that hits skin at the height of passion, or the rip of the flood tide buried inside. In the scene, I envisaged it as a physical thread of desire between Alex and Sophie.

Shudders took her over as the pleasure washed through her. In the midst of the neural storm she heard him grunt, and she glanced down to watch as he came: hot pulses of fluid spurting onto her neck, her chest, running down over her breasts as he squeezed himself, his body convulsing. (The Waiting Room, Chapter 1)

In Divestiture, which some of my very old readers were unfortunate enough to read, I used it as a mark of membership:

He pulled her back a little and smiled, bringing his other hand up to her neck, wet with his cum. He laid his wet fingers there and slid them down into the hollow of her throat, leaving a trail of it in the wake of his fingertips, she felt it chill and go tacky dry on her skin in the air.

"I mark you, little bird."

I also use it more subtly in Gaijin as a form of female rejection (a sort of love me, love my cum in reverse):

The first time, he shuddered. The next, he made a little sound and jerked. It only took a few more swallows until he grunted, his hands balled into fists around her hair, and he erupted into her throat.
The initial spurt caught her by surprise and made her gag. Salty, hot fluid flooded into her mouth as he pulled out of her throat. She let it seep from her mouth around his cock while he kept coming. (Gaijin, Chapter 1)

And again,

Jennifer's breathing slowed as the adrenaline born of fear and sex ebbed. As the roar in her ears died away, she could hear him breathing - evenly - as if nothing had happened. As if he were just a normal person lying down for a rest. She made as if to speak, but she could think of nothing to say that would make any difference to him, as if there was no language to bridge them, as if he were another species of animal. Something with teeth and claws lying beside her, with its own impenetrable reasons for the violence it wrought.

Feeling the wetness between her legs, a visceral disgust crept up her spine until the thought of having this man's fluids inside her for one more second would, somehow, like a venereal disease, leave her permanently insane. (Gaijin, Chapter 4)

What I have never done in any of the erotica I've written is use semen in humiliation. Not because I don't acknowledge that it could have that function, erotically, but because I've never written a character, male or female, who was so ashamed of sex that they'd see being marked with it as humiliating.

Desire

2009-06-29T13:11:00.006+07:00

I write a lot about desire; every erotica writer does. Desire, not the getting, but the yearning, is what separates erotica from porn, I think.

The beauty of desire is that it carves its reflection into the skin of a character. It animates them, but it can also be repressed, sublimated, substituted, mutated, rerouted. Like the different aspects of a single god, it can be plot, setting and character.

Many of my characters are based on people who think they know what they desire, get it, and find out that it was only a shadow of another, buried desire they were too vain, or inhibited, or insecure to know or admit they had.

Watching people, and you know I am an addicted watcher, I notice that very few of them are honest about what they want. For instance, most people don't really want money - they want what money will buy them: the admiration of others, freedom of choice, power. But they'll rarely admit it. Money is just so concrete and easy to understand.

In the same way, I've noticed that some people don't actually want the person they say they want. They want to be loved by that person, because their lover's regard will validate them. Or they want to be seen to be with that beautiful or rich or powerful individual, so they can be the envy of others.

I'm giving this a lot of thought as I progress through writing Beautiful Losers, because it is all about sublimated and misdirected desire. I don't offer a lot of answers in the story, because I don't have them myself. I only invite my readers to ponder the problem with me.

In the last couple of weeks, a surprising number of people have told me that I hide behind my fiction so as not to reveal myself. This has come from so many different quarters that I am sure they are quite right. So, in the spirit of honesty, I have to admit to having an almost pathological desire for knowledge. Not just book knowledge, although I like that too, but intimate knowledge - the knowing and the understanding, a desire to understand the meaning of what I see. That also includes an understanding of the experiences of my readers.

I have no idea if this is a surface desire that is hiding something else or not. I don't have the objectivity to be a good judge of that. But it probably is. In the end, it's almost always about feeding the ego.

Beautiful Losers - Chapter 25

2009-06-28T20:45:00.002+07:00

My clothes were still packed haphazardly in my bags. I had to rummage through stuff, and eventually gave up and settled on an identical pair of black combat trousers and a badly creased t-shirt. My hand shook as I put on my eyeliner. I had to wipe it off and start again.

On the third try, Sebastian strolled into the bathroom looking pleased with himself. I glared at him in the mirror.

"You're not in my good books," I mumbled, steadying my hand against the counter and closing one lid.

He stepped behind me, snugged himself against my ass and slid his hands up the front of my t-shirt. The nice neat black line was no more. It trailed jaggedly over my temple.

"Oh, FUCK! Sebastian!"

"Mm... yes please. Don't be mad at me Shirakins," he said in a mock whimper. "This way, everyone who is involved gets to see what it looks like before it runs live. And you do look good with your make-up fucked up like that. Quickie?" He punctuated the word with a thrust.

Continue reading: Beautiful Losers - Chapter 25
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Gone - Flash Fiction

2009-06-27T17:33:00.001+07:00

All the flirting, the teasing the innuendoes, caresses, kisses, muttered words of exhortation or ecstasy. The single, studied fingertip that travels down from my throat to my pubic bone, pulling a trail of shivers in its wake. The change in the scent of his skin as he gets hard. The position he pulls me into, the leg that parts mine and holds them spread. The sharp, sweet pain of a tugged nipple. The first breathless plunge of penetration. The second and the third.

All gone as I come.

But when I watch him with someone else, I remember everything.

(100 words)

Beautiful Losers - Chapter 24

2009-06-27T17:04:00.003+07:00

At first I couldn't identify the sound that woke me. I had been dreaming of a hallway full of doors, each of their handles twitching and turning as I walked by them. Opening my eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the dim light that sliced through the darkness from the partially open bathroom door on the far side of the bed. Someone was moving in the room.

"What is it?" I murmured. Jean made a little soft groan in his sleep and turned onto his stomach beside me. "Sebastian?"

"Sh... Go back to sleep, Shirakins."

I shivered, pulling the sheet over me and sat up. "What are you doing?" I whispered.

Continue reading: Beautiful Losers - Chapter 24
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In Response to The Rex Hotel

2009-06-25T21:31:00.001+07:00

Scarlet wrote a response to my post about The Rex Hotel. It's beautiful and haunting and here.

The Rex Hotel is Filled with Ghosts

2009-06-25T00:03:00.001+07:00

In every room, the secrets of men have leeched into the plaster on the walls and, no matter how many times they repaint, it never stops the leakage. It will be here until they tear the place down. Even then, some poor bastard will take the used bricks to build a house at the edge of a paddy field somewhere, and wonder why he has nightmares.

The ceiling fans have drawn years of sweat up into the air, atomizing terror, regret, disgust, love, guilt, hatred, lust, despair. Every emotion but joy. But then, I didn't come here for joy, did I?

I came to lie on this bed where whores have worked hard, where violence has been wrought, where nightmares have been born and died, where souls have been dissected. I came to the party a quarter of a century too late and only the faint scent of spilled scotch remains. And, of course, the ghosts.

There is nothing about me that deserves crucifixion, you understand. So I can't write you about that. I have never been a big enough sinner, or a big enough saint. I can only write of the crucifixions of others. Of the young officer who shot his superior in the head while out on patrol because he had seen enough death. Of the man at the supply depot who watched his leg disappear, day-by-day, not from anything with a satisfying name, but because here nature eats everything and took a particular liking to him. Of the working girl from the delta who spoke no English and did not cry out when someone tore into her ass, because she hoped against hope that he would marry her afterwards.

There are many martyrs, but I am not one of them. I'm just a chronicler and, for the most part, the phantoms keep me company enough. Still, it would be nice to have you here, to lie beside me and listen to the ghosts, to tell me you can hear them too.

Updates: Write something

2009-06-24T22:50:00.003+07:00

I've had a number of emails from people worried that my most recent post of Beautiful Losers was the last. It's not. I promised you an ending - a proper one, and you will get it. But not for a little while. I will post the next chapter on the weekend.

It's the beginning of a new semester for me, and things are hectic.

Besides that, I am, for the first time in my life, writing with someone else. This was something I had grave doubts whether I could ever do. But it seems I can, and it's teaching me a great deal: hopefully to be a better writer, to get my ego out of the story, to find a balance between caring about my characters and being taken over by them.

It is also helping me understand the way other writers think and this is illuminating, because it is a process I've never had the honour to be privy to. My father was a writer, but he was very private about it. It has not been a matter of thinking, 'Wow, they do it just like I do.' In fact, they don't. They have a totally different process. I've always thought I didn't plan enough before embarking on a story, but now I'm wondering if I plan to much.

It may all go completely wrong tomorrow. And even if it does, I've come away from the experience much richer.

One thing it has underlined for me is that writing is a truly glorious pastime. If you read me, please write. It doesn't matter what you write; just write something, today. Language is the only tool I use proficiently and, I have come to realize that I adore watching other people use it, too.

So, if you don't write already, please do. Write something.

Comments on beautiful losers

2009-06-21T10:57:00.003+07:00

One of the main reasons I post my work on the web is to run interference with Barthes' literary theory of authorial privilege. In non-academic wank-speak, it means that I enjoy the fact that readers can interact with writers and comment on/discuss/make meaning of the work being written, and express those ideas in the same place that the text resides.

For this reason, the comments on my fiction are important to me. I read them quite diligently. I'll admit that I tend to not pay a lot of attention to the ones that contain nothing but praise because, although they are gratifying, they don't give me a whole lot of insight into what the reader is thinking. My favourites are the ones where readers wonder about a certain part of the text, or examine it critically, or relate something in the text to their own experiences. However, from time to time, I get comments like this:

Psychology: D-
I’m glad you don’t have kids.
Posted by wolf at 18:22 20/6/2009

Would it be convenient to ignore this? Undoubtedly. So why is it I feel I have to address it? Because it brings up a number of interesting issues.

In the first place, it's obscene. That any piece of adult fictional erotica should, might, or could be associated with the caring for or raising of children is entirely inappropriate. And it says a great deal about the person who seeks to associate them that is disturbing.

Secondly, it assumes that the writer of a text holds the same views or participates in the same lifestyle as the characters in a fictional story. This is an alarming comment of the inability of schools to teach good critical reading skills. But to state the obvious: I am not my characters. And not only do I not necessarily share their worldviews, but I often write characters with diametrically opposed worldviews to my own. I do not, for example, hold Sebastian's views on sexual orientation. They were views I heard expressed by someone else and found interesting.

Thirdly, why is it that there is a plethora of fictional best sellers out there that pose all sorts of problematic moral paradigms - Armageddon, serial killings, racism, sexism, religious extremism, just to name a few, and yet no one seems to associate the fictions being presented there with the personality of the writers? Why only in erotica? Does anyone ever write to Stephen King, advising him not to have children because his imagination is so dark?

Back to critical theory. It says much about our society that we seem to be able to maintain incredible emotional distance from fictional accounts of violence, cruelty, injustice, etc. but seem to be unable to emotionally separate ourselves from fictional accounts of eroticism. Michel Foucault was a very smart man, for all his personal issues

Beautiful losers - Chapter 23

2009-06-18T23:31:00.001+07:00

"Jean," I said, moving closer, letting my fingertips glide over his cheek. His eyes had lost their focus again. "I know how much this scares you, but unless you use your safeword, you don't get a choice in this. Sebastian is going to fuck you, because I'm going to make sure he does."

Yet another whimper emerged from Jean's lips and I trailed my tongue across them to let him know that I knew, I'd heard. "No matter how much you struggle, or scream, or tense up. It's completely out of your control."

I was momentarily distracted by the slow, wet sounds Sebastian was making between Jean's legs, administering long, lazy licks to Jean's semi-erect cock. Equally distracted, Jean craned his neck to look down his body with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension.

Continue reading: Beautiful Losers - Chapter 23
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Beautiful losers - Chapter 22

2009-06-18T18:09:00.003+07:00

"You didn't enjoy it?" He sipped from a glass he'd poured for himself. "I got the impression that you did," he said, sounding droll.

"I didn't say I didn't enjoy it. I just still don't really know what it was."

"But you felt it, didn't you? When he turned?"

"Oh, I definitely felt it. It was quite strange."

"And you responded," Sebastian couldn't keep the smile off his saturnine face, "very naturally. He was very happy." He stooped to kiss me. "So now I need you to help me."

Jesus, the scheming never stopped. "Help you do what?"

"Help me make him feel safe."

I cocked my head and locked gazes with him. "Safe about what?"

Sebastian took another sip of wine. I heard Jean's footsteps on the stairs. "You know what," he muttered.

Continue reading: Beautiful Losers - Chapter 22
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