I'll Take You There

Thank god our at-home wireless internet is unreliable, so that on some days, at least, I can go grab my laptop and write my novel without going online every couple of minutes... say to the Smart Bitches blog, which is one of my latest addictions.

This week, for example, I spent I don't know how much time at a recent Bitchery discussion of erotica and erotic romance favorites. Of course I got some warm fuzzies from having my own work mentioned. But the discussion really got interesting to me when it got around to the inevitable (these days) question of why m/m erotica is so popular with women readers.

You can read it yourself if you want to see what people said (and if I had it to do over, I would have been a little less tart of tongue -- thanks, Kassiana, if you're out there, for having taken my comment in such good humor).

But what I've been mulling over ever since is the question of how people "shop" for erotica. Which, it seems, is mainly to go for what they know they like -- to check the menu and order their favorite flavor.

I suppose we all do that. It's nice to have a menu of familiar, reassuring, entertaining choices. And who could ever have enough Cherry Garcia? Or in my case BDSM.

Except sometimes we don't. Like those times a trusted friend guides you to some wonderful little hole-in-the wall restaurant where there is no menu, where the wait staff doesn’t even speak English. And you go there, perhaps with some misgivings, because you trust your friend... or because you’re bored with what you already know you like… or perhaps you’re not sure anymore, what it is you know you like and what it is you like just because you've always liked it.

Which reminds me of the time when I had to introduce my friend Simon Sheppard, at a reading of his then-new book, Kinkorama, at Modern Times Bookstore. Now, Simon’s clearly a smart, talented, very hot writer – but it's also pretty obvious that he writes from a gay male sensibility that’s kind of foreign to me. And the men he writes about, while often attractive, are miles away from the ones you'll encounter in the recent m/m fiction written for women, or even the m/m stuff I dreamed up in the Carrie books.

I might not have bothered reading as much of Kinkorama as I did. But I felt I had a responsibility to introduce Simon intelligently and to represent his work fairly. Just call me Super(ego)Girl. My dreams begin in responsibilities.

So I read the chapter about daddy/boy sex, and even, with more than a little hesitation, the one about diaper play. And… well, it’s not that I’ve exactly changed my tastes, the stuff was still strange -- even challenging, as the menus describe some kinds of sushi.

But under the spell of Simon’s voice and smarts and writing skill, I felt myself taken to that strange, wonderful hole-in-the-wall place where there aren't any menus. And I closed my eyes and opened my mouth and tasted – who knows what I tasted? – jellyfish, foie gras, tobacco, absinthe? It sure wasn’t Cherry Garcia.

So I’m wondering whether any of the rest of you out there sometimes take the plunge, expose yourself to a new and different erotic sensibility? What was it like? Would you do it again? Do you trust a writer's style and sensibility enough to follow her where she wants to go?