Unrequited

By Lisabet Sarai

Do I seem mad to you? If so, they are responsible. They've driven me mad with their beauty and indifference.

They don't even bother to hunt anymore. They spend their days in their king-sized coffin, alabaster limbs entwined in a frozen tableau of passion. They devote their nights to surfing the Internet, listening to Bach or Dvořák, or lounging on their deck, the endless grid of the city sparkling below them.

Except, of course, for the nights when they feed.

Occasionally, on rainy days when there's no risk, I muster the courage to lift the polished rosewood lid of their communal casket and peek inside. I'm always startled by the scent that rises from their inert forms, orange blossoms and sun-warmed stone, no hint of dankness or decay. Their exquisite pallor complements the perfection of their naked bodies. They seem like statues modeled from translucent, milky glass.

He slumbers with one palm cupping her pert breast, the other arm wrapped around her waist. Her honey-brown hair fans over his chest, fine as spider silk. She curls her fist around his cock, which is rampant even as they sleep. The bold gesture contrasts with her innocent features. She has the smooth cheeks, pointed chin and plump lips of a teenage cheerleader.

My fingers twitch. The urge to trace the shape of that sweet, ripe mouth is almost irresistible. More times than I can count, I've seen her girlish face grinning and smeared with gore. It doesn't matter. She will always be my angel, my inspiration, my heart's desire, my doom. My beloved mistress.

My master is equally magnificent in his own way, with a dancer's subtly muscled arms and legs and a head of glorious ebony curls like some pale gypsy. He has a bookish look, with a high forehead rising above bushy black brows and a sensitive mouth that cries out for kisses.

I've never dared to lean close and take advantage of his immobility, much as I ache to feel the chill of his flesh against my own. If I gave way to temptation, would he know? I'm not certain that their death-like daytime sleep stills their minds the way it freezes their bodies. I doubt he'd punish me, if he discovered my transgression. He knows I'd welcome the mark of his bullwhip or the icy invasion of his knife. No, more likely he'd mock me, or simply ignore me, refusing to acknowledge my existence. I couldn't bear that.

The sight of them, locked together in eternal stasis, holds me captive. Blood pours into my cock, blood I know they'd savor if they'd only take it, until I'm hard as the concrete walls of the basement room where they sleep. My pulse pounds in my temples as my futile erection strains my trousers. I am their creature, their slave, stunned into helpless worship by their unearthly beauty.

I know they need me. That should satisfy me – the knowledge that without me they'd might fry or starve or succumb to some overly zealous reader of horror fiction. Month after month, year after year, I guard them and I procure them their victims. It's my privilege to serve them. That should be enough. But I want more from them, God help me, more than I can ever hope they'll give.

From Renfield’s Lament by Lisabet Sarai

Our topic this fortnight is “Craving”. One can crave many things, of course: food, water, sweets, alcohol, drugs, attention, fame, money. For authors of erotic fiction, though, carnal yearning naturally takes precedence.

Unlike food or water, one can live without sex (as unappealing as that might sound), yet the craving for sex – or more commonly, for a particular sexual object - may well be more powerful than physical hunger or thirst. Sexual desire can be all-encompassing – physical, emotional, and spiritual. It can strip us bare, lead us to take actions we’d never consider if not under its irrational influence. Crimes of passion demonstrate the strength of this craving, its capability to render us temporarily insane with want.

Indeed the experience of sexual craving, that desperate longing for the desired other, may well be more intense than the pleasure achieved in its fulfillment. Yet erotica frequently focuses more on the latter than on the former.

When people ask me for my personal definition of erotica, I tell them erotica is fiction that portrays sexual desire. According to my definition, it’s possible to write erotica in which no actual sexual acts occur.

This is not a fashionable perspective. These days it’s tough to publish a story without at least one orgasm. A more popular definition of erotica is “explicit fiction intended to sexually arouse the reader”. Implicit here is the notion of satisfaction (either physical or vicarious). A tale of unrequited craving without the “payoff” may leave this sort of reader feeling cheated or frustrated. I guess I can sympathize. After all, so many people feel dissatisfied with their real-world sex lives; why would they want to be frustrated by the sexy fiction they choose to read as well?

As for me, I’m actually more interested in the desire than I am in the sex itself. I admire an author who can vividly evoke the state of neediness associated with acute sexual craving. One of the best tales in this category that I’ve encountered recently is Preston Avery’s “Won’t Last the Week”, in Tenille Brown’s recent anthology Can’t Get Enough. The narrator meets the woman of his dreams at a party. They spend the night on the beach, so entranced by one another that they forget to exchange phone numbers.

She isn't skinny like the girls I usually go for, like my ideal “on paper” woman, but curved and soft and she fits me just right. Her breasts are big with a delicious slope to them, and I know they will overflow my grasp. I could bury my face in the valley between them and never come up for air. I could have seconds and thirds and fourths of her and die a gluttonous happy man. She does everything I lead her into. I don't ask – words are still lost to us. The first time I lower one of my hands to those gorgeous mounds, hidden between a thin blue cotton shirt, she doesn't protest of push me away- she arches into me, into my touch, and makes the most beautiful noise in her throat. That moment, those moments, are all that I can feel. The future is as unreal to me as a unicorn on the planet Saturn. That place where names and phone numbers matter is at least a world away.

As the week goes on, dreams and fantasies of the lost woman consume the narrator. He wanders through his days in a trance of longing. He spends his nights re-envisioning their connection and rubbing his cock raw. Will he somehow manage to find her? Or will he go mad with need and frustration? The beautiful urgency of this story left me in wet wonder.

In fact, at the end of the tale, the poor guy does find his dream girl, against all odds. The story, though, is not really about that happy ending. Its focus is on narrator’s craving, so powerful it totally overwhelms everything else in his life.

And what about a story where the narrator does not get what he or she wants so badly? Can that still be erotic? I invite you to read the rest of Renfield’s Lament, over in the ERWA gallery. One of my goals in writing this story was to create a tale where the desires of the protagonist are ultimately frustrated. In fact the narrator does have an orgasm and achieve physical release. This, however, does not satisfy his craving.

Can I call this tale of unrequited desire “erotica”? Is it arousing? What do you think?