Erotica in a woke world
I never thought that I’d have anything in common with Jerry Falwell Jr., and then news hit that he (most likely) enjoys watching his wife sleep with other men. That news has also cast the fantasy into the mainstream spotlight, and while my life is mostly filled up with other noise (kids back in virtual school, still living a life mostly quarantined at home while trying to keep a business afloat in a world where companies aren’t buying things like they used to), one article from the Washington Post did catch my attention: “Why conservative men are more likely to fantasize about sharing their wives”.
Kirsten McCurran sent it to me, and after I got past the shock of thinking she was calling me a conservative, I actually read it, and it resonated with a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about lately. The gist of the article is that we want what we’re told we can’t/shouldn’t want. We’re drawn to taboo. As the article references, the “erotica equation” is:
Attraction + Obstacles = Excitement
As an erotica author in this woke era, there’s a lot to tackle, and there’s this precariously line to walk between our dirty fantasies and promoting harmful mindsets. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the #metoo movement and how the words I write could potentially contribute to that harmful perspective. Similarly, Black Lives Matter, which I support, has me considering the crassness of some interracial themes and tropes that are often featured in hotwife erotica. Is Mason Coles reinforcing racial stereotypes, for example? What about Heather Kingsley-Fletcher/Manhattan and her wild past?
I’d like to use this internal debate as a reason for the slowdown in my writing. Maybe it has something to do with it, who knows, but it’s largely just all those other things that are going on in my life. In the end, this is what I tell myself: I try to write characters that feel real and complex, and just as I struggle with these things and how to be a good person, so do my characters.
We are drawn to what we shouldn’t want. I am. You are, as readers. My characters are, too, and that erotica equation is at the heart of what drives a good story. Hopefully, in that process, it’s not a harmful one.
