Learn from the Master

A Guest Post by Lexi Wood

Who's got two thumbs and writes such dirty, filthy (not to mention QUALITY) smut that it's been paying Giselle's bills for months?

This g... okay, well I don't have thumbs, but you get the gist. 

You know me. If you haven't heard about my rise to stardom from my bunk mate/evil captor Giselle Renarde, I'm the most popular erotica-writing sock puppet on the planet.  I've also got the best hair, but I don't have any tips for you there. That's down to Mother Nature.

When Giselle told me your topic at The Grip was branding, I insisted on taking her spot. When it comes to establishing an author brand, the kid's got nuthin on me.  I mean, look at Giselle's backlist: genre fiction, literary fiction, non-fiction, erotic romance, erotica of every kind, from queer kink to trans science fiction to straight-up adultery. Novels, novellas, anthologies, short stories?  She published her freakin' DIARY, for Christ's sake! She's out of control!

With Lexi Wood, you're getting the same fine product with every purchase.  You can count on all my smut to get you hot.  How?  Take one barely-legal stepdaughter, add one sexy stepdad who knows he shouldn't, and make sure they get it on... and get you off!

There are variations on this theme, of course.  In Driving the Sitter, you get a babysitter and the dad driving her home.  In Blueberry Brat, an older man gets it on with a barely-legal blueberry seller in her roadside hut. Even though they're not related, you can count on these sweet young things to call their lovers Daddy, loudly and repeatedly. "Fuck me, Daddy!  Fuck me HARD!"

Amazon doesn't make it easy to communicate with readers what they're in for.  They won't let you call your book Sweet Young Thing Fucks Her Sexy Stepdaddy, or even refer to it in the blurb.  You have to count on readers of taboo erotica to seek out the term Taboo Erotica, and hope that anyone who buys your smut knows what they're getting into.

Since you don't want readers who are offended by seriously salacious content picking up your smut by accident, it helps to title your work in a way that tells the reading public exactly what's inside (but that won't get your book banned--notice Driving the Sitter isn't called Driving the Babysitter. Why? Because I've heard from other authors that erotic books including the word "babysitter" in their metadata have been banned. Can't be too careful!)

Back to titles. Take Good Girl's Fertile First Time as an example.  It's about an innocent young virgin who gets knocked up the first time she has sex (with her best friend's father).  Same principle with Pregnant by the Professor: The First-Time Fertility Experiment. A keyword-packed title tells the reader what's going to happen, and who it's going to happen to.

The reader knows what they want, so why not give it to them?  I don't get why this is so hard for Giselle The French Bitch.  She's been at this writing gig almost 10 years and she still makes novice mistakes, like writing a dark romance with a hetero HEA that's also full of hardcore lesbian rape scenes.  What even IS that?  There isn't a reader in the world who's searching the internet for the weird random stuff she's writing, and it shows in her royalty statements.

So fill those screens with daddies and daughters. Or find another fetish and stick with it. Readers of genre fiction have precise expectations, so be predictable. What have you got to lose...?

Besides your soul! *Bwahahahaha*
 
***

LEXI WOOD is a sock puppet who came to life one night while her keeper was out picking up Chinese food. When nobody’s around, she bashes her face against a typewriter until stories come out. And those stories are shocking.

Lexi’s exterior is 53% acrylic, 37% nylon, and 10% recycled tinsel. On the inside, she’s full of bloodlust, wanderlust, lust-lust, bathtub gin, and pills she found on the floor. She also got into those tranquilizers you give your cat to get it in the travel carrier. You shouldn’t leave those things lying around.

Handmade in Vulgaria.

Vogue

 . . . .  The online application process had been lengthy and tedious. And a little shocking to revenants of decency he hadn’t even realized were still there.

The topless, but soberly dressed Chinese woman, after reconnecting her face, had begun taking down the details of exactly the kind of machine he was hoping to stick his dick in tonight. What gender? Man? Woman? A young boy or a young girl?

A little boy? A little girl? Was she kidding with that shit? Did people do that?

Oh yes, sir.

She assured him, with an indulgent smile that such models were quite popular and a few were available this week with promotional discounts for new customers. Further discounts on young boys or young girls were available with their special membership card. Would he be interested in acquiring a membership discount card?

No thanks, lady. I’m sinking fast, but not that fast. Not yet.

A grown woman, please. Keep your little girls.

What age group? Our adult group begins from fifteen years of age to precisely seventy years of age. Older than seventy would be an additional charge.

He cringed again. There was something in the woman’s artificial eyes that seemed to be testing him. You don’t have to do this, mister, she seemed to suggest, behind her saleswoman’s smile. You still have some of your soul left. It’s not too late to cut your losses.

Young. Not too young. Maybe twenty-five. (Am I pathetic for wanting to do a twenty-five year old?)

Race of preference? Or a combination of ethnic groups?

Every man should take this quiz at least once, he thought. He watched the fields passing by outside the tinted windows. It’s good for you. Even if you’re not trying to get your freak on with a robot, this quiz will show you some seriously fucked up shit you didn’t know. They should make it part of your job applications. Hell, they should make you take it if you’re getting married to somebody’s daughter.

We know what strange flesh you really want to poke your junk into, Mister. You just think you know.

He had never thought of himself as a racist. He had never much been aware of the races of people he worked with. He was white, Scots-Irish with some Mexican on his father’s side. No big deal. Gay? Lesbian? No big deal, either. Common barnyard animals, maybe? Go in peace, my brother and sister. To each his own. But when it was laid out right there in front of you, like dog food in a dish, when all you have to do is reach out your tentacles...

Would you like an elderly black man or an elderly Asian woman?

A little boy or a little girl?

Jesus.

Big ass and big taco tits. Like those old National Geographics. Fuck me, bwana. Fuck me, great white hunter. Fuck me, bwana.

Christ.

He had settled on a non-threatening combination of Scandinavian and Polynesian. Scandinavian for the racially familiar. Slightly dark skinned Polynesian for the exotic. Was there such a thing? Amazing. What size tits? Prepubescent? Adolescent? Athletic?  Nursing mother? Or dancer? She demonstrated each size by adjusting the size of her own breasts and nipples. Dancer, oh! Definitely dancer, yes! Mommy!  Buy me that mommy!  With those big nursing nipples and whipped cream, nuts and a cherry on top, please and thank you. Pubic hair? Body hair? Certainly, the more the better. Teeth?

Teeth??

There were people who preferred them without teeth.

But goddamn, Hal.

Teeth please. Yes. Definitely teeth.

They offered a wide range of sexual aggression for his personalized simulacrum pleasure. He might choose from terrified virgin (weeping and pleading) to insatiable nymphomaniac. Well, someday who knows, but for starters just something safely in the middle, please? Experienced but demure.

For an extra insurance charge, they could throw in some bondage and strong sadomasochism in the works. No thanks.  Maybe not this time. Did they offer that to the assholes who ordered the little kids too?

Oysters or snails. Tacos or egg rolls. Red wine or white.

Roses or handcuffs.

From “Mortal Engines”  copyright 2009  C. Sanchez-Garcia

The first story I ever sold was a science fiction story about sexbots and artificial intelligence (gone terribly! Terribly! wrong) called "Mortal Engines".  I was quickly advised at the time by Lisabet to find a pen name, a warning echoed by M Christian in his craft book on erotic writing - get a pen name, dude.  You do not want people to know you write this stuff.  You do not.  At the time, not that many years ago, we erotica writers were the punk rockers of narrative fiction.  Hungry, out there, defiantly illegitimate.  Fifty Shades of Grey recently brought us all out of the dark and into the Walmart book aisle, complete with board games and T shirts.  That seemed to take the steam out of it for some of us.  A few of our most transgressive artists, like Remittance Girl, simply wandered off in disgust.

Horror and erotic writing are the most ancient of story forms, going back, I'm sure, to cave men fires.  Demons who punish the wicked and innocent equally.  Gods and goddesses who fuck and fill the universe with teeming life.  Even Bible stories of King Solomon with his 700 wives and concubines and Esther draining the balls of an enemy king and killing in him in his afterglow slumber with a tent peg through the head or  Lot's daughters seducing their father and committing incest with him to carry on the family line have lost their subversive shock.  

The physical power of horror and sex have always come from the implied more than the explicit.  From the allure and the danger.  In erotica, what is most sexual is most transgressive, but to be transgressive there have to be boundaries where ossified cultural values can be cheerfully challenged or kicked aside.  

The great film director Akira Kurosawa said "The role of the artist is to not look away."  Horror and erotica have always been those most physical and sensual forms of story telling where the artist could ferociously not look away, opening a path for a beloved poet like Mary Oliver writing of her own childhood molestations from her father in "Rage":

                   “But you were also the red song

                   in the night,

                   stumbling through the house

                   to the child's bed,

                   to the damp rose of her body,

                   leaving your bitter taste.

                   And forever those nights snarl

                   the delicate machinery of the days.”

 or Anais Nin with her completely consensual seduction and incest with her own father in her famous Journals.  There was a time when words had power to shock, with the sheer audacity of their images.  Therefore the dire warning for anyone who wanted to suit up for this game to get a name. 

I was recently grieved to hear that Playboy - which I subscribe to - would no longer have nude photography in its issues.  When Playboy appeared in the fifties, it was transgressive, violating boundaries, the most important being the boundary reserved to define good taste.  Talk about defiance.  What could be more defiant in the fifties than offering soft pornography wrapped in a package of genuine cutting edge cultural sophistication?  Internet killed this forever.  With the coming of searchable online pornography, any act, even the most vile, was served up for free, and in the blue lit privacy of a computer screen.  Now a tablet or a phone you can take in your pocket does the same thing.  A person can view the most bizarre acts human bodies can be paid to contort themselves into, while tuning out the dull drone of a budget committee meeting.  Intimacy and human touch are being replaced by Facebook, that alter of loneliness.

It makes me rethink my ambitions about sexbots, which I am now convinced will become a reality maybe in our lifetimes.  With the advent of artificial intelligence, which algorithms can plumb your actual desires, not just the ones you allow yourself to imagine, desires sounded through the sonar of subliminal body language to deep water levels unknown even to yourself, sex can be served up with cold precision.  Pure desire without the emotional risk of being refused by the desired, an essential element of eroticism.  That kind of disposable sex was always what had been purchased or simply taken from the professional and the slave.  Soon it will be legitimized as well.  Oh perversion, where is thy sting?

The Author Brand

As my co-blogger, Lisabet, discussed yesterday, building an author brand is quite complicated.  Primarily, you need to consider what a reader will associate with your name — and the clearer and more direct the association, the better.

In the traditional publishing world, authors stick to one genre or sub-genre under their name.  If they choose to explore a different genre or sub-genre, they often choose an alternate pen name.  For example, I’m a huge fan of James Rollins thrillers — but when he wanted to give epic fantasy a try, his publisher forced him to choose a different pen name (James Clemens) so as to not dilute the brand associated with the name James Rollins.  Romance author Nora Roberts also writes mystery under the name JD Robb.

There are some exceptions, of course, in the traditional publishing world.  PD James, mystery author, wrote the sci-fi novel, The Children of Men, under the same name.  While I haven’t read her mystery books, her one sci-fi novel wasn’t a grand epic of futuristic starship battles.  Rather, it was the tale of one man in the near-future, who meets a pregnant woman in a world that’s been gripped by total infertility for decades.  I would imagine the writing style, tone, and general plot structure resembled her mystery novels — and, so while The Children of Men would be a departure from her brand, it likely didn’t dilute it that much.  (Also, she wrote only one sci-fi novel — if she had wanted to write a series, she likely would have chosen a new name.)

I’ve noticed, though, that self-publishers often don’t follow the same procedure.  I think it’s because self-publishers can put out whatever they want, whenever they want.  They aren’t beholden to a publisher who can say, “You know what... this really doesn’t fit what readers expect from you... can you write something else?”  The self-publisher can put out non-fiction, romance, sci-fi, mystery, and more under one pen name because no one is going to tell them different.

Personally, I think this is a big mistake.  Readers get an unclear picture of what to expect from the author, which can lead to disappointment down the road.  It can also lead to serious problems... I came across one author who writes erotica and children’s picture books under the same pen name.  I don’t know why this author thought that was a good idea.

For myself, I write gay erotica (and sometimes gay erotic romance) under the pen name Cameron D. James.  I currently have two other pen names that handle different genres (and I’d rather not link them here to my erotica output).  It helps me stay clear about what is and what isn’t acceptable to say online.  As my erotica persona, I can talk about hot older men fucking skinny twinks, and maybe share some pictures on Tumblr depicting such things.  But if I was publishing my other stuff under the same pen name, then I couldn’t do that, as readers of the other genres wouldn’t want to see hot gay sex.

But a brand comes down to more than just the genre.  As Lisabet said yesterday, it includes specifics of what the reader might find in your stories.  Your pen name may be associated with BDSM, paranormal, power differentials, or more.

This is where I struggled with Cameron D. James.  I started as an erotic romance author with my novel, Autumn Fire.  However, I quickly learned that while my publisher classified me as erotic romance, Autumn Fire was clearly more in the erotica category.  So I was promoting myself as an e-rom author and getting bad reviews from e-rom readers who felt the novel was clearly erotica.  It certainly didn’t help that I self-published an erotica short story, then sold another e-rom novel to my publisher (and that one was also really more erotica than e-rom).  So I floundered for about two years, trying to determine my brand and my voice.

Finally, I said, “Fuck it,” and classified myself as an erotica author.  My erotica was doing better than my e-rom anyway.  But deciding my brand was as an erotica author wasn’t enough.  I still needed to define my brand further, to differentiate myself from other erotica authors.  Most of my stories feature older/younger pairings — and those that don’t will usually feature something similar (like a bulky football player and a skinny twink cheer team member).  So, I’ve taken that and kind of run with it.  I don’t always stay 100% true to my brand, but it does help focus what I do with my writing, how I promote myself, and how I interact with readers.  And I have no doubt that the readers appreciate it — because a quick glance at my brand can tell them if they’re likely to enjoy my stories or not.

Branding isn’t only about guiding the reader; it can also guide the author.  When I begin a new project, I make sure it fits into my brand — which can inspire ideas.  Since I know my brand primarily features older/younger, I start a new project by thinking of a hot older/younger pairing or situation that I haven’t explored yet.  Once I figure it out, the ideas tumble out from there and soon I’m excited to start the new project.

Branding is smart business advice, and I fear it’s something that’s being largely overlooked in the self-publishing world.  I wonder if some of the many self-pubbed authors that complain of eternally-low sales would do much better if they could brand and define themselves.  While there is certainly a whole lot more that goes into creating a professional author identity and high quality products, branding is a key element that cannot be ignored.


Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Go-Go Boys of Club 21: The Complete Series.  He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats.  To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

Building a Brand

By Lisabet Sarai

If you want to be successful in the highly competitive game of publishing (I'm told), you need to do more than just write good books and get someone to sell them for you. You need to “build a brand”. What does this mean? Here's a simple definition from Dummies.com:

When people hear your name, they conjure up a set of impressions that influence how they think and buy. Those thoughts define your brand.

For an author, having a “brand” means, first, that readers recognize your name and second, they have a clear and hopefully positive understanding of what you write that leads them to purchase your books. Popular authors like James Patterson or Stephen King have legions of readers who will buy anything they publish, sight unseen. Readers know what to expect from these authors. They'll pre-order a book before it's even released. The power of the author's brand trumps the quality of the actual writing.

In the erotic romance world, brands rule. Authors typically produce a multitude of titles in one or two clearly defined genres. Carol Lynne writes M/M contemporary erotica romance, often with a Western setting. Sabrina York creates rock-hard, flint-hearted military heroes, emotionally scarred SEALs or Special Forces guys who struggle against the weakness of loving a special woman. Cerise De Land pens Regencies populated by disgraced dukes and feisty, independent ladies.

In the realm of erotica, I consider Rachel Kramer Bussel an example of effective brand-building. Pretty much anyone who reads erotica will be familiar with the dozens of anthologies she has edited, many focused on kink or fetishes. Rachel builds her brand not only through her publications but also through readings, parties and an amazingly active presences in the blogosphere. Just say “cupcake” or “spanking” to any erotica reader and Rachel's name is likely to come to mind.

Alison Tyler provides another instance. Alison’s brand is even more focused than Rachel’s—she writes dark, transgressive BDSM, mostly M/f, significantly less playful and exploratory than Rachel. Her characters are driven by need, not just erotic curiosity. Alison’s not as “out in the world” as Rachel. She characterizes herself as “a shy girl with a dirty mind”. Still, I suspect there are few readers of erotica who wouldn’t recognize her name. Having recently joined Twitter, I’ve discovered she’s a true expert at this medium, with the ability to make almost any snippet of prose sound fascinating (and naughty). I’ve been studying her technique, but so far I can’t come close.

So how does a poor aspiring author like me go about building a brand? The authorities I've consulted highlight three major issues:

Distinctiveness – Both your name and your work need to be sufficiently unusual to stand out from the crowd.

Value – You need to offer your readers good value for their money. You can't fake your way into effective branding, at least not for long. Especially when you're building your brand, every title you produce has to satisfy your target readers.

Consistency – Your brand controls readers' expectations. People who purchase Carol Lynne's books expect explicit M/M erotic romance. Readers who buy Rachel's anthologies expect playfully transgressive, sex-positive stories in which pleasure trumps more serious issues. For a writer, brand consistency encompasses both genre and style. If a book doesn't fulfill readers' expectations, your brand will suffer.

And there's the rub, for me. Consistency. I write all sorts of genres and heat levels. I write both erotica and romance. BDSM fiction was my first love but I've deliberately diversified. I've written contemporary, paranormal, historical, suspense and science fiction; heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and ménage; dark, playful and comic. When a reader comes across my name, he or she isn't likely to have immediate expectations about content or tone. About the only thing that a reader can assume is that my work is likely to contain a lot of sex―but even that isn't guaranteed.

Distinctiveness isn't a problem. I happened to choose a pen name that appears to be unique. (I was trying for something that sounded foreign and exotic, to go with the exotic setting of my first novel.) Google my name and you'll find pages and pages of references to me and my books. It appears that in cyberspace, at least, there's only one Lisabet Sarai.

I'd like to believe that I'm set as far as value is concerned as well. I produce quality work, or at least I try, with original premises and engaging characters. Most of my work has received very positive reviews.

If consistency is required in order to have an effective brand, though, I may never succeed. I'm easily bored. I don't want to write the same sort of book over and over. I'm contemplating sequels to several of my novels and I'll be honest―I'm not sure that I want to return to the same worlds and characters for the duration of another book. I'd rather try something different―to stretch my abilities.

Obviously there are common threads that run through my work. I tend to write stories that have a strong sense of place and I frequently use foreign settings. My characters tend to think a lot―they're not usually action-hero types. In my stories, sexual identity tends to be fluid; it's common for a straight character to discover homoerotic yearnings or vice versa. Sex in my tales is often a revelation as opposed to just recreation. This is particularly true of sex that involves dominance and submission. Finally, I think it's fair to say that my style is more literary than popular (though I'm trying to diversify in this area as well.)

These kind of abstract commonalities aren't enough, I suspect, to bolster a brand identity. I'd be really interested to know what readers think when they hear the name “Lisabet Sarai”. Most probably, it depends on what (if anything) they've read. The trouble is that any particular book they've picked up will likely give them mistaken expectations for the next one of my books that they read.

I really don't know how seriously I should take this dilemma. Should I channel my writing energies into just one or two genres? If my goal were to support myself with my writing, I'd probably have to do just that. But really―I hate that notion!

So where does that leave me? Can I be a moderate success without building a brand? Can I attract a community of readers who appreciate diversity and don't mind having their expectations violated? I don't know. To be honest, I’ve all but given up on the whole notion of branding.

I’m a writer. Period. Pick up one or two of my books and read them to discover what I do. Sorry but I can’t offer you any shortcuts.

Some Men Are Dogs, and the Law Is An Ass

by Jean Roberta

We were introduced by a mutual friend who told me he was married. He never lied to me about that. He seemed to be living in a cheap, sparsely-furnished apartment in the “city” while his wife and three daughters lived in the colourfully-named satellite town of Moose Jaw. Clearly, I thought, he was separated.

The first time we were alone together, he told me that he and his wife had agreed not to get a divorce while their daughters were still living at home. I thought this sounded sensible. I knew he was a pillar of the NDP, the furthest-left of the mainstream Canadian political parties. He had written a groundbreaking book about a controversial period of local history.

On a physical level, he didn’t thrill me, but I thought we had a mellow friendship based on shared humanitarian values. Sex with him felt comforting. I began to wonder what he would be like as a stepfather to my daughter.

There were clues, of course. He kept telling me that I was completely different from his wife. (Your ex-wife, I corrected him.)

Different how? I asked him. He told me numerous times that she was French-Canadian, raised Catholic. But since she was married to you for years, I responded, she can’t be very conservative. He replied that she was a real wife and mother. Apparently she had qualities that I couldn't understand.

Then came the day when I asked him how he would feel about living with me and my daughter, just temporarily, so that I could move out of my parents’ house. He told me that his wife wouldn’t accept that. But surely, I told him, she’s just as free as you are to form other attachments?

No, he said, you don't understand. She's French, and Catholic. She believes in marriage. She would never cheat on me.
I was stunned.

I moved myself and my three-year-old daughter into a housing co-op for low-income single parents. He came to visit me there, and he ignored my daughter as much as possible. I noticed that he couldn’t bring himself to call me a “mother.” He seemed amused by the concept of a community of “single parents,” which he seemed to regard as a euphemism for something much raunchier.

He had known me when I was married, and he knew my daughter had my ex-husband’s family name. I failed to see what was so funny about my current situation: living on a shoestring on whatever I could earn while my daughter’s father had legal visiting rights but no serious legal obligation to pay child support.

I also failed to see how I was vastly different from his wife, especially if he was already living separately from her. If he and she got divorced, she would be a single parent herself.

She phoned him in his cheap apartment when I was there. After some conversation (not whispered), he said, “I love you too, honey.” After hanging up, he gave me a big smile. “That was my wife,” he explained.

He went on to tell me that he would be giving up his apartment in the spring, after the ice had melted. He told me his real, loving wife had advised him to rent a cheap apartment over the winter so he wouldn’t have to commute to work on icy roads every day. Of course, he went home to Moose Jaw every weekend.

In that case, I told him, our relationship is over – if it could even be called a relationship. He accused me of suddenly trying to become “bourgeois.” He reminded me that I had always known he was married. He implied that women like me have no right to say no, especially after having said yes.

To my amazement, he seemed to believe that he was a good family man, and that I was the breaker of promises, since I had made myself available to him. I was raising a child with no man in sight, so of course I didn’t have the moral fibre of a good French Catholic wife. Never mind how I had arrived at this place. For him, our affair had been shady, and that was because I was the kind of woman who lured married men into the path of wickedness.

No matter what I said, he was adamant that we didn’t have to stop seeing each other. After the time he arrived at my door late at night (claiming he couldn’t afford to sleep anywhere else), I refused to let him into my apartment. I could easily imagine the kind of welcome I would have received had I showed up after midnight at his family home in Moose Jaw.

After several months, and various ruses on his part, he stopped phoning.

To this day, I am stunned by his conception of what is, and is not, “cheating.”

I’ve always wished I could sue him for conning me out of an emotional investment in bogus stock. For me, sex was not the point of it all; he was less satisfying than my own fantasies and my own fingers. What I valued was our shared “honesty,” a fantasy in itself.

Legal definitions of “infidelity” focus on sex because it is tangible and provable. The law has never found a way to rule on deliberate miscommunication, or disillusionment.

In/Fidelity

Iby Annabeth Leong

I’ve always wondered how a person who subscribes to the philosophy that sex is evil, horrible, shameful, and bad is supposed to just turn all that off on the wedding night and flip a mental switch that now sex is required, wonderful, joyous, and holy. In my experience, guilt and shame never go away that easily. I have a dear friend who seemed to manage that change just fine, to thrive within it. I think the permission slip of marriage set her free to explore in a way that she never could have allowed herself to do while single. It’s not something I can picture for myself, though. For me, the only solution is to not think of sex as shameful under any circumstance, so long as everyone involved consents and is of age to do so.

I’ve also never understood how a person can suddenly change from feeling like, “The absolute worst thing in the world that could happen to me would be to become pregnant,” to, “I want a child more than anything.” I read a very beautiful essay once that described a change from taking birth control pills daily to taking prenatal vitamins and marveled at all the small shifts of perspective that are indicated by that shift of behavior. Again, it’s not something I was able to follow in my own life. When I got into a situation in which it seemed like it might be time to get pregnant, I discovered that unprotected sex induced in me all the same panic as ever.

I bring up these two examples because I had the same experience with “infidelity” (I’ll explain the scare quotes in a moment). Infidelity, as many previous posts have described, is something our current culture deems an egregious offense. I have read studies that say we are more accepting of divorce, premarital sex, exploration of all sorts than people were fifty years ago—but far less accepting of infidelity. I have cheated on lovers at times, and I was wracked by guilt when I did.

Recently, however, I found myself in one of those switch situations. My husband and I, after probably a year or more of intense consideration, decided to become polyamorous. We laid out our expectations of how that would work—when and what did we need to tell each other, what sort of reassurances did we need from each other, and so on. And then I found myself in the novel situation of kissing someone else and knowing, intellectually, that it was allowed.

I am not being unfaithful, in that I have not broken any promises that I made. When I kiss my lover, I do it knowing that everyone involved is aware of the nature of the situation, that we’ve all chosen to be in it. My husband and my lover had dinner together before she and I ever kissed, confirming that everything was on the up and up.

I kiss him goodbye and drive to her house, text him that I’ve arrived safely, spend the night with her, and eventually kiss her goodbye and drive to the house I share with him, text her that I’ve arrived safely, and so on. It is a different sort of routine, but it’s a routine. It’s a different sort of faith, but there is a great deal of fidelity involved. I compare calendars and pay attention to my promises and do my best to be kind and fair to both of them.

Despite that, I had trouble flipping the switch. I found (and still find) that I am sometimes flooded with the sort of guilt I would feel if I was cheating. When there is any sort of problem, I am inclined to blame myself—if I didn’t have another lover, I think, this probably wouldn’t be happening (even if it totally would).

I also fear what people will think of me. People who know me as her lover, if they saw me with my husband… Would they think I was stepping out on her? Or vice versa? I worry that I’ll be branded with the shame even if the ordinary definition of infidelity doesn’t apply to me.

I read an advice column recently (and I really should stop reading those), in which the columnist ridiculed the idea that a man was in an open marriage, assuming he must be lying to the woman he’d approached, lying to his wife, out only for a lay, and a bunch of other stuff. Obviously, I don’t know the people involved, but the behavior described in the original letter sounded like the behavior people use when they’re trying to be ethical about this sort of thing. It’s painful to know that I can try my best to be ethical and yet still be seen as unfaithful or adulterous.

I’m still trying to get that switch flipped, though, because, as hard is it is to do, I want to see the situation as it is: no one is doing anything wrong. I’m lucky to be in this situation, to be understood so well by these people, to be cared for freely and as a free person. My hope is that I’m wrong to think of it as a switch to be flipped. Perhaps all this shame is a wound that will heal with time.

Milleresque-- A true tale

by Daddy X

Though Momma X and I have been an item for over fifty years, there were times when we didn’t live together. When her fragile health allowed, she’d run off, spreading her sweet ass around Mendocino, New York or Bucks County Pa. while I poked my dick into anything that moved or shook in the San Francisco bay area. She and I were married at eighteen and twenty respectively, so neither of us had time to be single. Considering her health problems, we both needed something like freedom every so often, just for the experience.

Back in the 70’s, two gorgeous sisters, Alana and Roberta, lived around San Francisco. Alana Banana and Roberta Perverta. You can guess how they came by their nicknames. These sexually enthusiastic lovelies occupied a class by themselves. Although they both held decent jobs, their main interests were smoking opium and having sex. Always up for a party.

Alana and I had been fuck buddies for years. Somewhat of the voluptuous hourglass type, Alana was younger, cuter and shorter than the slender, more glamorous Roberta. I’d always wanted to get under Roberta’s skirts but hadn’t yet turned an opportunity into reality. There had been chemistry between us; we’d flirt and cop a feel when nobody was looking. Times we’d hug for a greeting, I’d wiggle my fingers into the crack of her tush and she’d grind her pubic bone on my thigh. She was never circumspect about wanting to fuck me. Alana thought we’d make a good threesome and on several occasions had attempted to get a scene going. But something had always come up.

I forget the bar where we started, but suffice to say that one night Alana, Alana’s boyfriend Mike, Roberta and I were all blotto. Plenty of sexual tension permeated the atmosphere as it became more and more obvious that Roberta and I would finally get together. We just needed a bed. We ended up in Mike’s Volkswagen bug, on our way south to a town on the peninsula where Roberta lived with her kid. She and I took the tiny back seat, fondling and fingering each other for the entire ride. By the time we reached our destination, Roberta and I had worked ourselves up to the point where we were ready to dash inside from sheer sexual frustration.

Not to be. Roberta’s ex-boyfriend was waiting outside the house. He was crying, trying to get back with her. Damn!

Alana, Mike and I went inside, paid the babysitter and sent her on her way, then poured more drinks while Roberta talked with her ex on the porch, trying to get rid of the poor fuck. Talk about bolloxing the mood!

After some few minutes, a scuffle could be heard outside. Mike and Alana were… um… involved in another room, so I went out on the porch see what was happening. Turns out that Roberta’s current boyfriend had shown up. A bit of a tough guy. He proceeded to punch out the ex and send him on his way.  

New boyfriend glares at me and says “And who the fuck are you?” At that point, it was looking worse and worse. To say the least.

By that time, Mike and Alana had joined us on the porch. One of them chimed in, “Oh, Daddy’s an old family friend.” Thank goodness.

Boyfriend stared harder and said,  “Were you with him?” a thumb over his shoulder indicating the guy he’d just run off.

“No,” I said. “Never even met the dude. Just got here from the city and there he was.”  I grinned, showing lots of teeth.

“He won't be back,” he said. “Can you imagine the nerve of that punk? Coming over here after my girlfriend? I showed his ass.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “What an asshole.”

It was hard for those of us who’d shared the earlier ride to keep a straight face. Here I was, my hand still smelling like the most intimate essence of his very own Roberta. The guy wound up taking a liking to me and we got on like old pals. Every once in a while over the course of the evening he’d brag about the poor shmuck he’d chased off. We continued with the drinking and smoking until all of us went to crash. I was lucky enough to get the guestroom so I had a chance to masturbate.

Next morning, I became aware of a naked Roberta slipping between the sheets beside me. She said the boyfriend had gone to buy makings for breakfast screwdrivers and that she wanted to make up for the previous night. That we’d have to make it quick.

Later, after breakfast, the boyfriend went out again to buy some weed, so Roberta and I ducked into a first-floor bedroom and fucked again before he got back. While we were going at it, her 9 year-old son came to the open window, calling for “Mommy.”

Turned out one of the wildest nights of my career. I remember it being quite Henry Milleresque.