Did You Really Do That?

I am mostly a fiction writer. I write non-fiction for articles on art and other subjects for a specific purpose but, when I write for my own books, I write fiction. It is safer for someone like me. I am by nature fairly reclusive. People find that hard to believe because I have a “big” personality, as one of my friends put it. But I am generally happiest on my own - left to my own thoughts and fascinations.

The thing I am discovering about fiction is that people want to believe it is true anyway. Right now I am working on a collection of short stories with a central theme - the longing that is at the core of our lives. A longing that doesn’t seem to fade as years past. My friend Jane says it is like erotica for over-fifties. Well, I appreciate her idea but I’m not entirely comfortable with the word “erotica” either.

Writing sex is hard - fiction or non-fiction (I wrote one piece of non-fiction erotica for a collection that was never published. I’m glad it wasn’t published and I doubt I’ll ever do anything with the story.) I cannot imagine doing much writing without there being sex involved - sex is so integral to a passionate life - but even when it is written as fiction, readers think it is from your own experience. “Did you really do that?” they ask. I never know how to answer. The thing is, for me, there is a fine line between sex and other sensual pleasures.

If you live in the world with a high level of sensuous appreciation it is sometimes hard to know what is sexual and what isn’t. So much of what you experience is right on the edge of the erotic that it is difficult and, in my opinion pointless, to try to differentiate. I wrote two short stories that I doubt will make it into this collection but which I may find a use for some day.

One, titled Heat, is about a woman vacationing alone in a villa on a tropical island who is so lost in the sensual pleasures of the warmth and the ripening fruit and light reflected on the water and the singing of birds and cicadas, that she does not even notice the crude attempts at seduction of a man who is staying there too. “Did that really happen to you?” Mysterious smile.

The other, titled Silk, is about a woman fashion designer who is in love with luscious textiles. She collects silks, fine cottons, and other sumptuous fabrics and dreams about all the fabulous garments she can fashion them into. There is a man who loves her but whom she tends to take for granted until he finds a way to use the fabrics to tease, arouse and seduce her. It’s a fun story. “Did that really happen to you?” If it didn’t, it could have.

The thing about writing sex is that it is never about sex per se - it is about who we are as people - or who our characters are. It is about how we experience the world and experience life. I have read some very dismal sex scenes that left me grateful that I had no context for such bleak experiences. And I have read some that utterly thrilled me. Well-written sex scenes teach us about the writer but more about ourselves and our own responses.

I don’t know if I would ever feel comfortable writing a non-fiction sex scene for publication (the unpublished one would have been anonymous). Something about that is almost too depressing. Better to write about the erotic experiences of characters I invent and let people think what they will. “Did you really do that?” Mysterious smile.

Thanks for reading.