Musings on Modern Erotica
- Kirsty Rowan
- Oct 12, 2016
- 4 min read
My love of a filthy read began at the tender age of seven, with the innocent bestowal from my parents of The Body Book, in all its achingly middle class glory. For those of you that haven’t read this magnificent tome, it riddles out for your cherubic mind the many wonders and functions of the human body, peeling back the curtain on the hitherto untold mysteries of your bowel functions and your parents’ bedroom. That’s right, SEX. Wonderful. I’d flick through the pages with my sticky fingers until I got to the good part; two ginger adults engaging in what is, in hindsight, the sort of sex that you would have once every four months with a partner whom you’re so bored of, that even the sound of them eating makes you want to put your head down on the dinner table and weep.
But at the time, this was hot stuff! From that day on, Ken, Barbie and Freddie the bear would indulge in the beast with two backs with such regularity, that if they had not already been endowed with smooth little plastic patches for genitals, they would have worn off regardless within a calendar month.
As I got into my early teens, however, I was after a more significant fare. Like a grubby pigeon pecking for crumbs, I would prowl the bookshelves of grown ups whenever I was left unattended, leering with gleaming eyes at the full bushes and exotic poses of their 1970’s paperbacks, and releasing a filthy cackle whenever I came across something particularly undignified. At sixteen, my horrid little friends were paying me commissions to write them into erotic stories featuring the pallid, pimply youths that they were in love with at the time. It was a raging success.
And so, to line my pockets and patch my shoes, I’ve had a twinkling inkling that perhaps the time has come to once again dust off my scarlet quill, and dip into the potential goldmine that is self-published erotica. After all, the old squirmy knickers commute has reached behemoth proportions, now that people don’t need to hide their porn in a brown paper bag, and cast fervent, damp glances at their fellow passengers in the fear that someone will read the words “ steaming pussy” over their shoulder. No Sir, with Kindle in our midst you can sit there getting your rocks off from London to Brighton and nobody is going to be any the wiser – unless, of course, you’re sitting there with a raging boner while you’re at it.
Although really, how anyone manages to get a raging anything with modern erotica as it is, is beyond me. In doing a little healthy competitor research, it seems that the same exhausted old clichés are being banged out (there’s one) with such monotonous regularity (there’s two, if you’re into that kind of thing) that they are more likely to induce a yawn than an earth shattering orgasm (three – boom).
And so, here are my most despised, over-used words and phrases in contemporary erotic literature:
He/She was breathless with anticipation. Oh were they breathless with anticipation? Were they? The amount of anticipating that goes on in the bedroom is staggering. Over and over again, Dukes and Duchesses, lecturers and students, strapping Scotsmen and buxom wenches, all are in a perpetual state of bloody anticipation – JUST GET ON WITH IT!
Her tunnel of love. Just, no. Please, no. A tunnel implies that you are going in one end and out the other side, and if you do that in this case you are turning harmless little ride on the hobby horse into something considerably messier.
His (insert your preferred dick word here) SPRANG out of his pants. Now I’ll grant you that on occasion, there can be springing. But surely there are some more creative ways of phrasing one of nature’s little jokes? You could rig up a trampoline with the number of times I’ve read ‘sprang’ since I began my, ahem, research.
His seed. No, Count Rompington, nobody wants to think about the awful things that you’re planting in those women with your ‘seed.’ Get it out.
80% of 50 Shades of Grey. You know, I did manage to read part of that book. I did, I managed to read a fairly significant portion. And then, having read the line “Anastasia bit her lip, and peered up at whats-his-face from under her eyelashes” for the 978th time, I gravely put it down, backed away, and wept in the corner for the lost hours of my life that I had spent reading it.
But fair’s fair, and of course there are a lot of splendid contemporary geniuses when it comes to penning the pelvis tango – I’d recommend you check out Erika Lust http://erikalust.com/ if you fancy something spicy and fabulous. As for the classics, I’m an Anais Nin girl all the way, The Delta of Venus is just as subversive now as it was then.
But I’d like to finish up by giving Kudos to one of the most deliciously atrocious writers around, Mr Rocky Flinstone. If you haven’t yet listened to the My Dad Wrote A Porno podcast, you need to drop what your doing this very minute, get your earphones in, and prepare yourself for the most knicker wettingly hilarious times you’ve ever had. It. Is. Smashing. https://www.acast.com/mydadwroteaporno.
So bye bye you gorgeous darlings, have a wonderful weekend and check in next week for more from Into Ophelia’s Garden!
Comments