Stuck in a familiar spot

Perhaps it will seem surprising, given the genre I have chosen, but there is one thing that’s particularly tough for me to write about: sex.

By which I mean: the sex scenes, the actual progress of physical engagement.

I love to write about characters, personalities, motives, relationships; situations and complications and plots; desires and fears. I especially love to dwell on edges and transitions, whether it is the young virgin’s dawning realization that sex is not an abstraction, but something that applies to her personally, or a married woman who finally decodes, understands, and accepts her submissive nature. I love dialog — my dialog-only stories are pure self-indulgence — and the personal dances that happen around the borders of sex acts.

But... when it comes to hydraulics... it is really hard to write.

Let’s face it. Sex that you are not personally involved in is, well, pretty awkward. All those legs and arms to arrange, sweaty bodies, parts slipping around where they aren't meant to. “Ouch, move your elbow, you’re on my hair!” “Oh, baby, that’s so — oh, oh, oh, foot cramp, stop stop stop.” There is no good universally-understood vocabulary of positions. And even when all is going perfectly smoothly, romance, passion, and communication undistracted, what is an author to describe? It's not like there is much mystery to convey, not to an experienced reader.

And don’t get me started on the inarticulate gasps and moans and sentence fragments that accompany passion; nor the un-spellable sounds of orgasm.

Finally, it often seems intrusive. I tend to develop a liking for the people I write about, and then it seems quite impolite: hey, wait, I need to write about the condition of this girl’s vagina? Isn’t that a little too personal?

Please don’t misconstrue this: I love all these things when I am in the midst of them with my belovèd — then, I think they are beautiful and real and declarative and significant. It is just that it’s hard to write about. But readers of erotica, by and large, want the physical details. If I write twenty pages of really hot prelude and say “Then they made love, the end,” I would leave people high and dry (see previous post about masturbation).

All this, longer than I intended, just to say that I am at my usual sticking point in Four Bars. Everything is written except for the sex — and, as always, it’s the hardest part to finish. Because, really... “they made love, the end.”

— Frenulum