Being Dirty, Feeling Shame ( #ExtremeErotica )

by Annabeth Leong

For the last two weeks, we've been wrestling with the question of what "dirtiest" means. I'm not sure I know what it is either. What's dirtiest can be what's desperately hot, or what's desperately shameful, or both at once.

There was a time in my erotica writing career when I pushed into the deepest recesses of things with a sort of innocence, without knowing that I might find strange things in corners, or disturb myself, or bring up questions that I didn't know how to answer.

After a couple years of writing, I started getting emails from Joe at Sweetmeats Press, and he said he wanted my wildest stuff—the dirtiest and the most creative. I believe I delivered for Joe. I went into some of my deepest fantasies (he's the one who published my book, Untouched, which some of you have read).

For another story, "Safekeeping," I played with a fantasy that had been in my mind for a long time. I used to housesit, and at one point I got fascinated with the inhabitant of an apartment I visited often. We had a very intimate relationship, despite not knowing each other at all. From that was born a story of obsession where I went for it with all my heart. The narrator of the story is obsessed with the object of her affection's body—every trace of it that she can find.

One typical review said: "[This] story really pushed the raunchy-dirty envelope I actually cringed at some of the things that went on."

I know some erotica writers take this stuff in stride or wear it as a badge of honor. I think, though, that I used to believe in some sort of basic similarity between people. I thought my fantasies weren't really any weirder than anyone else's. The stuff I wrote for Sweetmeats proved me wrong. And it made me uncomfortable to feel different or somehow dirtier.

This was the beginning of a period of me learning about this, of finding out that even in our field there's a way you can wind up feeling unacceptably slutty or unacceptably perverse.

I'm here to write dirty stories, right? But there are times when a story can feel too dirty, as in too dirty to be generally acceptable.

So I really like the stuff I wrote for Sweetmeats. I think it's poetic and hot, and it comes from a really deep place in me. But I have trouble recommending it, and if people tell me they're going to read it, I feel scared. And maybe that's what makes this my dirtiest story.

Here's the part of "Safekeeping" that I think made people cringe, if you're curious.

***

But, like all good things I suppose, that blissful, innocent time had to come to an end eventually. For me, that moment came the night I peeked into the wastebasket beside the bed, having just arrived for another week with Sasha, and saw three used condoms coiled atop a bed of discarded tissues.

My heart stopped, reactions warring in my chest. First, this meant he had another woman, that someone else had lain in his bed and moaned for him. The thought crushed me. It destroyed me. I think I went a little mad from the picture of an unknown beauty with her legs spread, her hips curling up toward Michael’s fingers, her hands on her breasts perhaps, her bright pink tongue just visible through parted lips.

And he had fucked her. Three times! He’d fucked her until she ached. He’d fucked her so she’d feel it the next day, a little bruise at the base of her belly that would make her remember the head of his battering cock. I didn’t know whether to feel pride for my Michael’s prowess or chagrin that he could betray me so many times so easily.

Still, I loved him too much to focus on my resentment. The condoms in the wastebasket presented an opportunity I could not bear to miss. They offered me a chance to finally taste him. For once, I wouldn’t have to seek Michael out through layers of associations. I could place him straight on my tongue. A shiver passed through me, then settled in my cunt. My inner walls quivered for him. Almost, I could convince myself he’d left the condoms as a gift, that he’d understood what I needed from him.

I pulled the first one out of the wastebasket, then sat on the edge of the bed, cradling it in my lap. Would he think I was pathetic if he knew about this? Would she? I imagined the woman he’d been with, smirking at the extent of my desperation for the man I loved. She would pity me if she knew I went through the trash for him, that I treated any little thing that had come from his body as holy. She hadn’t wanted him the way that I did, hadn’t been with him skin to skin.

My heart convulsed with a virtuous ache. The goodness and sincerity of what I felt for him became as clear as my passion. I knew I could not doubt or hesitate. Michael needed to know how utterly I craved him.
I lifted the condom slowly but with purpose. Her scent leapt to my nose, and I had to choke down my jealousy. This bit of latex had been wrapped around Michael’s cock. I soothed myself with that knowledge. I stretched it out and stroked its length, as my cunt wept with desire. In the reservoir at the tip of the condom, I saw my prize, a milky pearl of pure Michael.

When I was ready, I raised the condom to my lips. With my tongue, I parted the rubber ring at the base and delved inside, feasting on stale salt and musk that gave me precious hints of how they would have been when fresh. A sob rose from my throat. I wanted him all to myself.

Soon, the condom sheathed my tongue. I coaxed it with my fingers to I could reach ever deeper inside, needing to taste that pearl. Finally, the point of my tongue made contact with Michael’s come. Before I could control myself, I recoiled at the bitter, thick, room-temperature substance I encountered. Then I reminded myself what it was, and the purity of my love turned the flavor into something sweet. The dried residue revived when it joined with my saliva, melting over my tongue as if it had spurted from his cock just moments before.

I closed my eyes and groaned my ecstasy. Imagining he could see me, I dropped to my knees beside the bed. If his cock were in my mouth, he would want me there on the floor like that.

Growing bolder, I turned the condom inside out into my mouth, slurping and sucking. If not for the other woman, I would have put one of the condoms inside my cunt. Instead, I contented myself with slipping my hand into the waistband of my skirt and down inside my panties. Too impatient to bother with finesse, I forced a thick mass of fingers into the entrance of my cunt, the material and the awkward angle preventing me from getting as deep as I would have liked, but the blunt stimulation doing the job nonetheless.

I frigged myself, grunting harshly around my precious mouthful. As my orgasm neared, I cared less and less about whoever he’d fucked. I just needed more of him. My teeth ground into the little wad of latex in my mouth, but I wanted more.

Frantic with impending pleasure, I scrabbled for the wastebasket with my free hand. In the other room, the dog’s trimmed claws tapped against the wooden floor, probably in response to the way I was crashing around the bedroom. I paid no mind to anything but my prizes. Two other condoms, filled with Michael. He’d tied these at the base. I popped them into my mouth, wincing at the sour taste of the other woman.

Somehow, I had to make him want only me. My cunt spread wider at the thought, admitting a little more of my hand. I bit down into the condoms and they burst inside my mouth, releasing a gush of Michael.

I swallowed for him, the liquid heating inside me as it traveled down my throat and into my stomach. With the palm of my hand, I cupped my belly, treasuring it for holding him.

Then I redoubled my efforts, fucking myself so hard I collapsed to the floor face-first, panting. When the orgasm came, it almost hurt. Pleasure stabbed my brain like a migraine. I lay dazed, chewing latex. Now that my need had been sated, I could taste spermicide, too, and bitter clarity filled me.

The parts of Michael that I’d just swallowed had lain inert for days, like every other bit of him I’d managed to claim. It didn’t matter how intimately I knew his home and his life. It didn’t matter that he trusted me to care for his dog. The truth was, he’d given much more to that other woman. He’d given his vibrant, living self. He’d given her the heat of his hand, his breath in her ear, his hot come surging straight from his balls.

I had to have that, too. I’d thought I could be content with what I was getting, but because of her I now knew that wasn’t enough. Somehow, I had to find a way to let Michael know I needed more.

***

If you're into this, the story was published in Made for Hire, which is for sale here.

I'm Not Telling

by Annabeth Leong

I always dodge when people ask me what books I want to write. I even dodge when people ask what I'm currently working on. It's not that I don't have ideas—I've got a file of snippets, beginnings of things, and even more detailed maps and outlines. And of course I'm always working on something.

But these are my rules. I never publicly discuss any work that's not under contract. Even privately, I never discuss any work that's not at least halfway finished. Most of the time, I won't even tell my partner what I'm working on. The only reason I make private exceptions is that it's sometimes useful to talk it out when I'm stuck on something. When I was working on Untouched, I had frequent discussions with one trusted friend. He helped me work out plot and pacing issues, and I'll be forever grateful.

Some of this is superstition. I believe on some level that if I talk about something I want to write, I'm cursing it. I'm pretty sure I have never finished a book that I talked about beforehand. A few years ago, I blogged about a book I was working on based on the story of Persephone. I was really excited about it, and I'd gone through the whole process of outlining (which for me is quite extensive). I thought I was committed to seeing the project through.

Not so. I've got three long attempts in my files. The story just wouldn't work, and I couldn't stick with it, and I felt humiliated because I'd said I was going to do it.

That brings me to another reason I don't talk about works that don't yet exist. Talking about my work publicly, even in the wish phase, makes me feel boxed in and constrained in a way that I don't like. I'm a very productive, prolific writer, but part of what I think fuels that is that I feel free to make abrupt changes. I take things that are supposed to be books and turn them into short stories. I turn short stories into novels. I write 30,000 words, abandon them, write a different book instead, and then go back to those 30,000 words. I change straight pairings into lesbian pairings and back. I weave disparate works together and rework them into one thing.

My writing process is nonlinear that way and it breaks a lot of supposed rules (especially the one about staying faithful to a particular manuscript until it's done—I'd be nowhere if I tried to force myself into that sort of fidelity). I don't like feeling as if I've created an expectation that I'm about to produce anything in particular.

I'm not generally a fan of Stephen King's writing advice (I use adverbs just to spite him, and I revise my work while the printer ink is still steaming hot). I think he's the one, though, who first gave me the idea that I shouldn't talk about work I hadn't written yet. If that idea does come from him, I'll still swear by that one.

King (I think) explained that by telling the story to someone, you prematurely gain the satisfaction of having written it. You get the pleased reaction, the oohs and ahs of excitement, and all that stuff screws you up if you actually then go and try to write it. The thing feels dead, and if something that person got excited about doesn't turn out to work, you don't know what to do. You're not alone with the work anymore—there's someone else in the room.

There's another reason I don't talk about the books I want to write. There are ideas and then there is true, naked want. Getting to that second thing is a process for me, and I don't have access to it off the top of my head.

When Joe from Sweetmeats Press asked me to write a novel for him, he asked me what was near to my heart, what I really wanted to write. My nature is that I always have a lot of things flying around—I have a lot of ideas about everything, and I get excited easily. What I really want is a harder question. It takes work for me to silence myself enough to discover it.

I took a day to sit and plan and freewrite. I love Joe, and I love the work he draws out of me, and I wanted to answer him as best I could. It took me the whole day to get to the seed of Untouched, and it didn't involve looking in my idea file at all.

It wasn't until a good six months into the project that I began to understand why I really wanted to write that book, what there was about Untouched and its characters that I needed to express. When I did, it tore my real life apart for a while. I've said before that my creativity is way out ahead of me as far as self-awareness goes, and that was very much true in this case. I found myself reevaluating many, many things that I thought I knew about who I am as a sexual being.

Because of that, Untouched was an unusually difficult book for me to write—it went much deeper into raw territory than I usually allow myself to go. I like to work a little in the past, with realizations I've already become comfortable with. To finish Untouched, I had to grow as a person and as a writer. The book was a bit beyond my wisdom and my capabilities.

This is not to say that my other work isn't meaningful, or that I make a habit of dashing things off. But I like a little distance between myself and my work—it's easier to work with things I've got perspective on, and it's easier to work when I'm not bleeding from a major artery. I prefer to mix a judicious amount of blood and soul into my ink, not just spew. I'm reserved that way.

Untouched will be out next month, so I've dodged by talking about a novel I already did write. All this to say, though, that the next time someone asks me what's near to my heart, what I really want to write, I'm going to understand that they are also on some level asking what is raw and fresh and dirty and painful and so ecstatic I can't bear it. I'm going to think twice before I answer.