Written on the body

The roof flew from over my house – I have a house in the mountains – and I had to rush there and try to beat the rain. And while I was moving books around, I came across something I wrote when I was fourteen. I was in love then, and the back of my notebooks were filled with initials and hearts and arrows. Among all that, my first attempt to write erotica: only seven lines, scribbled in purple ink, so bold and strong for a fourteen- year-old. But I was in love. And I felt like I could do it.

***

I was too embarrassed to have even written it, though it did give me a sense of power that I had never felt until then. I never showed it to the boy.

***

I am terrible at writing erotica. Throughout my life, because of the nature of the work I do, and my own personal interests, and what I say inside the academic world, I have been invited more than a handful of times to write erotica. I never went through with it. I have turned down anthologies, double spreads, have risked and failed terribly at writing for videos: all because I just cannot find inside me words enough, I tell myself. The descriptiveness needed for erotic writing is an art that I just cannot master: it requires a plethora of vocabulary that I do not possess, structures which I cannot comprehend, and mechanics which are way beyond me.
I am not a good erotica reader, either. Sometimes it is impossible for me to disconnect from the structural part of any writing, and I see myself looking for figures of speech and word repetition and oxymoron. I cringe at redundancies, and that is why I am a terrible erotica reader. Long descriptive lines do not succeed in arousing me, but rather have me building in my head a blueprinted design of how things are supposed to fit together in that given position. I approach erotica with technical glasses and gloves, and both the literate and the architect in me just will not let me enjoy it.

That is why, when I find erotic writing that physically affects me, I fall in love. And this recently happened when I crossed this . I met Liza on Twitter, some joke about being sick and doctor prescribing hotel sex, and it led me to her blog. Maybe she does not even write erotica: maybe she just writes life. But all I can say is that her words have left me speechless and unable to think for some time after I read the first lines. Maybe it is not even a story. Maybe it just happened. All I know is what happened to my body after I was done with her lines. And I fell in love.

***

On the same note, Natasha Gornik always wins me over in a heartbeat: “i want to lick Prague”. If you haven’t read it, you should. It is right here.

***
It is easy for me to write about sexuality and pornography. It is easy to do it, because – if done according to academic standards – there is very little of me I need to put into my work. I have had students inquiring me about my own sexuality and it never surprises me when people are amazed that they cannot grasp ME from my writing. It is academic pornography: in the academic world, the academic has the least important role in the play. We celebrate the work we are studying, its author, its audience. We are always hidden behind quotations and syntaxes. We are even, I dare say, supposed to remain apart from whatever it is we discourse about. Any of our own personal preferences slides inside an article or seminar and we have just put into question everything we have just said. We suppress “in my opinions”, “in my point of views” because we are merely reporting what, yes, we have concluded and, yet, is everything but our own thoughts. That is why I don’t find it strange when people ask me my own sexual orientation, or preferences, or fantasies. I might even give them a direct answer now and then.

***

All this is to explain why I have been MIA from Darling House. I am in love. With a person, with their words, with how things are said to me. But, mostly, I am in love with this whole new world of erotica writing which, slowly and out of necessity, is welcoming me. Maybe nothing will come of it, maybe I just need to go through this scary phase, where I cannot think about anything else. Maybe it is theory coming into practice – and what a frightening thing that is! Maybe it is something more. Maybe. Just bear with me for a little longer: I don’t remember the last time I felt like I was fourteen. And it feels fucking great.

***

The new boy reads my erotica in full. Maybe it is not even erotica. Maybe it will just happen. But it still makes me feel empowered. Even after all these years. The difference is that, now, I write for him to read. And I show it to him: pieces of me, written on my body.