“Have you read Love and Kink, by Guy New York?”
“No, should I?”
“Sooooo good…. Shocked at how good it was.”
“But here’s the problem: I just don’t get turned on reading something by someone I can’t imagine fucking.”
This is true. It’s why, as much as I admire the craft of Guy New York and Jack Stratton, their stories don’t get me hard, don’t make me want to go rub one out. And I’m not just heterosexist here – lesbian porn? Even erotica written by ostensibly monogamous women? It all just can’t get my dick hard in any reliable way.
Am I alone here? When you read erotica, is the author her or himself your central character?
I don’t have this problem generally, with fiction, but I do, often, with non-fiction: if I don’t like the author, I’m going to be really hard-pressed to like the book. (I’ve written a bit about Sex at Dawn, which suffers from this challenge. So did Joe Wilson’s expose after the Valerie Plame affair. And Richard Clarke’s critique of Bush-era national security, just to name a few.) I don’t have to want to fuck the author, but I have to want to sit down and talk with her or him about the subject at hand.
In the case of erotica, I think I actually have to want to fuck her. Oh well. Clearly my loss.
Because I understand that Guy New York’s Love and Kink is really hot.
I read Love and Kink recently as well. Strangely I got immersed in the story between the two characters more than the erotica. I was all tangled about the tragedy that they are drawn so strongly but live separate lives and the way the relationship would probably self destruct if the two characters DID manage to live in the same city for any length of time.
I do read erotica that gets me hot, mostly in blogs. Some of it on THIS blog and some of it on others. It is hard for me to pinpoint what will get me hot exactly. Sometimes my own writing does it for me more than anything else. Does that make me narcissistic?
I don’t think so.
I think it means you know your sexuality better than anyone else. But I’d be curious to know (I always am) what it is that does do it for you, whether here or elsewhere.
N.