Apropos that this is the day for the first entry on this brand, spanking new website.
I'm just a few weeks away from the book going live on the web and my inner circle of readers have their copies sizzling away on pc's or paper pages this week; smoke rising from them as they live in my world for a bit.
It's interesting, the conversations that have happened recently as my circle of friends have become aware of my latest literary foray. Women lean in closer and speak in hushed voices and men pretend not to listen, but I can see those making trouser adjustments as they hear their wives, girlfriends and other females at a restaurant table dropping sex words like cracked black pepper in the course of the evening’s discussions.
If you want to get people off the political or religious debate hot seat, toss a few words out and sit back to watch the fun. Try this. When there is a short lull in table chatter, say "Sex books. Discuss."
Formerly shy friends will be offering up tasty tidbits of books, films, memories or fantasies and your table talk will lead to interesting after dinner activities once you get your partner(s?) back home.
Just last night, at a friend’s casual barbeque, we ran through the usual, "How the hell did 50 Shades sell as many copies as it did if it's so poorly written?" discussion and as I was helping the hostess gather items in her kitchen, she was telling me the story of her first orgasm via masturbation at age 13. Moments later, the male guests walked into the room as we were comparing lubrication products; their cost and efficiency in keeping the slip and slide zone moving.
Where this was most interesting is that our hostess is a person seen on TV every night in our area and as a household name, she is stopped most every day by folks asking her, "Hey! Aren't you....?" To which she replies, "Yes I am; Monday thru Friday."
She's not the sort of woman the general public would expect to be discussing the benefits of purchasing the Slippery Stuff Gel water soluble personal lubricant in the 16 fl oz pump container vs. the more diminutive 4 ounce tubes you can tuck in a pocket while stacking corn on the cob and Guinness Bratwursts onto serving platters for the table.
But you know, that is the point of all this. Everyone; EVERYONE, young, old, famous, anonymous, heavy, painfully thin, single, married, hetero, bi, gay, lesbian, transgender, whomever; everyone has some form of relationship with their sexual selves and all these books and web access to information that didn't exist decades ago when I was freshly deflowered are changing the way we talk. They are changing the way we feel about letting others know that we (gasp!) fuck and enjoy it.
There was a time when I would talk with women I knew about reading letters to Penthouse or (going back to the 70's/80's) Qui Magazine, and these seemingly evolved females would look at me dumbfounded at my admission and confused as to how I got my hands on them in the first place. "Did you sneak them out of ...'s stash?"
"Fuck no. I walked into the drug store and bought my own copy off the rack. Don’t you do that?" Apparently, they did not.
Sexuality, sensuality, erotica and its place in the collective psyche of modern women is just now, 40 years after the Pill, moving out and mainstream and we are finally rejecting the "slut" label that traditionally accompanied women interested in sex like fries or a shake accompanied your double cheeseburger. It's "implied."
The advent of the Internet and the opportunity for women to join in the fun at whatever level they chose in the privacy of their own homes has given us a far greater look into what we've wanted all along. And the reason why a mediocre erotica book can sell a zillion copies as an eBook is because good or bad, we could buy it in private, read it in private, jill off to it in private and enough of us did just that to toss this McBook into the stratosphere of literary history. Had that particular book gone first to print, or to a real editor, it likely, would have languished unsold in the London neighborhood bookstore the author lived nearest to.
Bottom line: women are hungry for independence from a very old stereotype of the wanton, slutty, oversexed, whorish, loose, easy, spreads 'em like butter persona that some stick up the ass, male douche bag created all the way back at the first telling of the story of Adam & Eve and her fricking apple. Let's flush that old image like the fecal matter that it is.
How about tonight, instead of timing the fireworks to some stirring piece of John Phillip Souza music, we time them to orgasms instead? I suggest a seated position, outside where you can see the fireworks and be sure to draw out the fun so the grand finale can happen in the sky and in your crotch at the same time.
Happy 4th and welcome to the blog!
XO
Pan
