Not to Have

There is a lot of focus in erotic literature on wanting and having, but what of wanting and never having?  That's a harder story to pull off.  One of the things that amazes me about the diaries of Anais Nin is how she seemed to be able to have every man (or woman) she wanted; and yet, the most ardent moments are perhaps when she's deeply craving.  

Well, let's leave pure lust for a moment and ask about love.  When a romantic connection can never be sated, what does it mean for a life?  Growth, I guess.  And that's the arena of the erotic writer, surely.

I love what we do in erotica, am proud of what we ask folks to own and face.  But here's what I'm questioning more and more: can we ever tap the desperate need that's never sated?  Maybe that's not our arena.  

Or maybe it truly is.  

Just Say It

Generally speaking, I don't like metaphors in sex scenes.  If you really want to arouse a reader (or bring about any kind of feeling other than humour) it pays to be direct.  Don't tell me his sausage was lying on her sweet spot!  Tell me his sex was resting on hers.  Sausages don't arouse me.  It's a thing.

For me, the more metaphors you use in a sex scene, the more I'm snapped out of the moment -- unless, of course, the image is so perfect that it communicates a vivid sensation.  Direct language in sex scenes is pretty damn impressive; and I don't necessarily mean you have to be explicit -- though that can work damn well, too.  Here's one I admire, which isn't explicit, but is still direct.  Two lesbian lovers in Victorian England have sex for the first time.  I've cut the build (which is sensational, I might add) and have plunged you into a later moment, when the narrator first touches her lover's sex:

Here she was wet, and smooth as velvet.  I had never, of course, touched anyone like this before -- except, sometimes, myself; but it was as if I touched myself now, for the slippery hand which stroked her seemed to stroke me: I felt my drawers grow damp and warm, my own hips jerk as hers did.  Soon I ceased my gentle strokings and began to rub her, rather hard.  "Oh!" she said very softly; then, as I rubbed faster, she said, "Oh!" again.  Then, "Oh, oh, oh!": a volley of "Oh!'s", low and fast and breathy.  She bucked, and the bed gave an answering creak: her own hands began to chafe distractedly at the flesh of my shoulders.  There seemed no motion, no rhythm, in all the world, but that which I had set up, between her legs, with one wet fingertip.

From Tipping the Velvet, by Sarah Waters

Even in quite a gentle piece, the only metaphor's "velvet" -- and it works well, here, because it's all about the sensation.

Mind you, Jilly Cooper once wrote that Rupert Campbell-Black's erection "rose like a monument" and I laughed and laughed and laughed.  Humour counts too.  ;)