Is Erotica Dead?

(Originally posted at Buttontapper.com)

"Specify type of goat" (photo: incubaker.com)

Though the internet is full of porn of every variety, and all one has to do to find the appropriate fetish is to specify the type of goat they prefer, it seems to me that the art of erotica is being sorely neglected. As porn is to fucking, so erotica is to foreplay, and in my mind, foreplay is all about seduction.

Unfortunately, most writers get this part terribly wrong. Their idea of seduction is the “bom-chicka-WOW-WOW!” music that cues a pornographic actor’s presence in a scene, cock hard and ready to fuck. No matter what your gender, a 2-second musical cue is hardly enough time to become aroused and ready for some lovin’. While some poor doomed souls may have already been trained like Pavlov’s dog to become sexually ready at the sound of a bell, the rest of us humans are in need of stroking—whether of the physical, mental or vocal variety. This is where erotica is meant to shine.

Building towards a climax is what writers do, no matter what their subject. Rising action leads inexorably to the denouement, where comedy or tragedy finds fulfillment, release. All good writers, then, know how to build tension, to tease, to draw out, to spur the reader onward where necessary and hold her back when the pace picks up. This tension and release is the requirement for plot, and without plot, you merely have a sea of words, Shakespeare’s “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

While some may argue that erotica is an absolute waste of time, the ultimate in nothingness and lack of significance, it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Pick up any John Updike novel and you’ll find sex to pass the time, sex that stands in for other battles between the sexes, sex that is meaningful and meaningless. Updike, despite the occasional sexual blunder, knew how to write erotica, building up relationships between two people that would ultimately become lovers, creating rising cocks without specifically referring to them as “turgid members” and “throbbing manhoods.” Even when describing sexual situations that were meant to be comical or disgusting or slightly dangerous, he circumvented these clichés, the mark of an artist rather than a fumbler inserting keywords to crudely press our erotic buttons.

Instead of guiding us gently from foreplay and fun to serious (or even comic) sexual encounters, erotic writers nowadays mostly cut straight to the fucking. This is no longer erotica but porn: the scandalous close-up, the come-shot, the faked orgasms. Is this what we crave? Occasionally. But far more often, we desire mental stimulation, that connection between characters that makes everything feel real. Can two monkeys screwing really convey the same intensity and interest as two well-developed human beings, with thoughts and feelings and uncertainties, setting aside their differences, finally, to fuck loud and long? It’s the build-up, the character development, even the plot that we are missing: We crave well-written smut!

So is this type of erotica dead? Not entirely. Black Heart still seeks well-written stories of erotic interest, but they are hard to come by. (And yes, that was a double entendre.) We need more than pumping and thrusting. We desire more than mere male-takes-female fucks. We are interested as much in our lovers’ brains as we are in their genitalia, and making their naughty bits tingle with frenzied longing. We want to caress our lover’s brains as much as their parts. It is at least as much the anticipation that turns us on as the act itself. And the waiting is the most delicious part of any game. Don’t you think?

–

Laura Roberts is the editor of Black Heart Magazine and the author of the forthcoming novel Naked Montreal.