About a week ago, Remittance Girl wrote a post called Writing Erotica for Men in which she posed several questions, including "And how do erotica writers appeal to a male readership without
resorting to cliched stroke stories?" and "The essence of male arousal is
pretty well documented, but what is the essence of male desire?"
You know, which isn't asking much.
I chose to write a post in answer, rather than a comment, because at first I didn't think there was a simple answer. In the intervening time I realized there is a very simple answer, but I think if I had written only those six words it would have sounded glib and potentially thoughtless. So, instead we're going roundabout.
Immediately on reading her questions, I began to think about literary sex scenes that I could remember. Because, frankly I have read a lot of books out of prurient interest, but in some ways reading for sexual content when you're aroused is like eating at McDonald's because you're hungry. How many McDonald's meals do you remember? So, what could I recall specifically? And what were the common elements?
Norman Mailer wrote a book called Ancient Evenings. I never finished it, but this was in part because there was, in my view, an amazing and prolonged sex scene, and the several subsequent chapters took the book in a completely different narrative direction. I wasn't ready to give up the universe he had created that lead up to that sex scene. I haven't re-opened that book for the better part of two decades, though I still own it, my place is marked, and I still intend to finish.
The scene itself is not particularly graphic, if I recall correctly. It's specific in that there is no question the characters are in sexual congress, but what got me was the dialogue. It was a back and forth of male and female sexual symbology: architecture, geology, zoology, theology, astrology, astronomy... if it could be construed as the male or the masculine, or the female and the feminine, the consort or the partner, it was part of the rapturous dialogue between them. It was prolonged joy and desire and ecstasy.
The next scene I remembered was from The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. This is an austere murder mystery that is set in a medieval monastery during The Inquisition. The sex is both incidental and monumental. The narrator in the book is traveling to learn and study, and is a sort of young Watson to the much wiser Holmes-like character who is his mentor. At one point, while the young narrator is separated from his mentor, he happens through the kitchens in the dark of night and encounters a peasant girl. She has a package of organ meat wrapped in rough cloth. It's an exchange. The peasant girl gets the organ meat through an arrangement with a much older friar. She gives herself, and the friar rewards with cutting scraps—all under the cover of darkness. The peasant girl, seeing the young man, is just a little happier to perform her task. No words are spoken. The narrator asks no questions and loses his virginity without ceremony. When someone is heard to arrive, the peasant girl runs away and the narrator hides. The friar has come to look for payment. He sees the meat has been moved, but but he does not see a peasant girl.
My descriptions of the above are generic and not specifically erotic. That's leading to my point, though. It's not that something has to be written a certain way, that certain language must be used, or that specific things have to happen. Any of those things could add or subtract. Everyone is different. Certainly, I don't think I'm like most men I know, but I know that on some very basic levels, I can't not be a man.
Another memorable vignette outside of traditional erotica is in Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I would note the way he depicts the goddess Eostre and how she receives worship. In the sexual act, the male is swallowed or otherwise consumed. While this happens, he might be somewhat perplexed, but he experiences nothing but pleasure and is effectively powerless to resist his fate.
This leads me to vampire fiction. My first taste was a fairly tame comic I read before I was a teenager. It was a vampire story that took place in a film-noir-era gotham. I certainly didn't understand lust then as I do now, but I haven't lost my taste for a good vampire story. In the time since I read the comic, I've learned the combination of the vampire genre and the film noir genre is actually very clever. In both types of tales, lust is a lure, a tool, and a weapon. The man who does not know this is doomed. The flip side of this is that a man knows his desires could lead him willingly to oblivion, if he was properly primed.
At this point, I'm dancing around the answer, but I have one more stop to make: Penthouse Forum. In the heyday of print pornography, to which I may have personally contributed some financial support, Penthouse magazine had a monthly section of stories allegedly submitted by readers (all of whom had name and address withheld) of real-life-truth-I-swear-to-God sexual encounters. These are the literary equivalent of porn. Just very straight and to the point. But even here we can find a kernel of truth.
If you take away the contrived circumstances, unbelievable serendipity, the feminine caricatures, behavior that is not ever seen in one's real life, the endurance, and the athletic positioning, I think you will find common elements. This is where I go out on a limb. What I think you will find in erotica written for men are two implicit truths: 1) She wants me. 2) She likes what I like—she enjoys it, too.
This is our greatest sexual need and desire. Sometimes it's our greatest delusion. I think if you look at what men do, what men say, and what men say they do, you'll see connections here.
So, there's the core around which to wrap a sexual act or delicious, decadent intrigue. Highbrow or low-brow, that is your human connection, that is your male.
In short, à la Cheap Trick, "I want you to want me."
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