My love for writing steamy sex scenes

The “juice” you will find below, excerpts from the erotic scenes in my unpublished novels, was at first a bit embarrassing to cut and paste into this column as I truly felt I was exposing myself in public. One reason for the initial embarrassment was the thought that some people might turn up their noses at what they perceive to be grungy, purple prose that would even have DH Lawrence turning in his grave. And yes, I often found myself wincing through his purple stuff, not enthralled at all, not even as a horny schoolboy who could not keep his eyes off girls’ bottoms and thighs mysteriously jiggling and whisking through skirts. Though I did gape in wonder at my mental pictures of the scenes between Lady Chatterley and her lover, trying to increase the resolution. Was Lawrence expecting people to be aroused by his prose? Or just cover up their “true desires” with their civil shock and hypocrisy? Did he really care?

But I just love writing erotic scenes and hope they are not seen as mere porn. I feel so human as I get in touch with my inner urges, instead of suppressing and thus “demonising” them as some depth psychologists and religious folk would put it. I remember with utter surprise my arousal at seeing my first lesbian love scene in a movie (can’t remember the name) when I was about twenty. Two women absolutely allowed to have their way with each other and I had full permission to watch. There was just something so gentle, so unforced (including no penetration), so exquisitely sensuous and drawn-out, about their lovemaking. Later on would come along movies about Anais Nin and other gals in Richard E Grant and Uma Thurman’s Henry and June. And then, more bluntly, the recent Black Swans.

But why should I have felt embarrassed about showing in this column erotic scenes from two novels I am still seeking to publish? Note I said: “have felt”. As I began to write more about Lawrence and so forth I felt the enormous discomfort fall away after I cut and pasted in what you will find below. It was like the first tingle of slipping off one’s clothes and going onto, say, a nudist beach. After a while you become so much more at ease, enjoy looking at others’ bodies, or find it amusing, and savour the freedom: the sensation of wind, water and sand against your crotch and bum. All that and a few glasses of wine in the sun just go together like beach sand and butt cracks, doesn’t it just?

Further, like many, I come out of a religious background that taught me to feel embarrassment, even guilt and shame about sexual matters. Nay, dear ma’am, no more. And celebrating our sexuality has a lot more to it than the sexual act alone. Far, far more. For a start I relate profoundly to students as a man and as a father or uncle figure, including university students I have taught in China. A few, years later, still regard me as a stepfather. I cannot relate the same way to them as my wife Marion does in her deeply “mommy” way. Celebrating our sexuality is celebrating our humanity. Censoring our sexuality gets us into trouble. The previous sentence may seem a bit ironic as you will see later on.

I would like to think I (can learn to) write good, even elegant erotic prose, to teach us all to inhabit our bodies more fully, to cherish our flesh and its glittering ephemerality ….

Oh, now, tut tut, Rod, this is your delicious dilemma: you just want to lay perfumed bouquets of words next to all those secretive, wonderful clefts: the fissures and shadows of necklines, between buttocks and thighs, the breasts, armpits and throats, even between cute, chubby toes …

And at the same time you also want to rip all the undies, bras and other cute bits off the beach cottage wash-line and run away while everyone is having a skinny dip. To where your binoculars are hidden in a tree at the top of the first hill.

Anyway, some of you may be self-righteously offended by what follows, so why don’t you just stop here? Others might get out the popcorn:

* * *

“We’d better get back inside in case there are any paparazzi about,” murmured Ginevra, no longer the queen when Antoinette was around. Before the bedroom door closed, Antoinette was sliding her fingers across Ginevra’s (censored) and (censored), seeking entry. Ginevra groaned and submitted. She pushed her hands under Antoinette’s underwear and appled her buttocks, squeezing them and scratching them lightly with her nails, her (censored) moistening. Antoinette pushed her onto the bed and slowly stripped her queen of all her clothes, admiring her skin which always had this glow: candles against the sheen of a mirror. She lowered her head in her knelt position and placed her tongue squarely between her queen’s thighs. Ginevra shuddered, wrapping her legs around Antoinette’s head and scratching her scalp, stroking her hair. Blasphemy upon blasphemy, Ginevra could hear her long dead, religious mother still say. She stared up at the spot on the wall where the tiny video camera used to be, hidden behind a mirror which had been taken down. She decided to pay more attention to her lover.

Half an hour later they lay huddled together, in this aura, this sense of candles extinguished and smoking. Their breasts rose and fell, Ginevra’s large, purplish nipples against Antoinette’s tiny pink ones. Antoinette watched her comparing and chuckled, drawing Ginevra’s head down onto her breast.

* * *

Antoinette could smell her own heat as her (censored) loosened and she tried not to groan as she thought about what the wicked odour of Ginevra would be like if she was there with her right now. So Antoinette rolled over and thrust her fingers into herself … then heard the door slowly creak open. Antoinette looked at the door. Was that her imagination? No. The door was slowly opening. Who was it? Narouz or … her question was answered as she heard Ginevra’s whispered ‘hello … ’ Ginevra was a half-shadow in the moonlit doorway. Antoinette half sat up, feeling her stomach tauten with the movement and with desire. For the first time since her earliest teenage encounter she felt conscious of her slightly large hips and bum. And surely Ginevra could smell her sex. Peeling off her gown, Ginevra walked over to Antoinette’s bed and sat next to her and placed her hand between Antoinette’s thighs. Antoinette groaned and (censored) (censored) (censored), pulling up her legs and separating them. ‘Are you sure?’ whispered Ginevra. She breathed in the odour of the bathed and anointed woman in the bed. Ginevra’s fingers caressed Antoinette’s thighs. Antoinette sat bolt upright and kissed Ginevra on the mouth, putting an arm around her neck and pulling her down onto her.

They had both (censored) together several times now. Antoinette still lay under Ginevra and squeezed Ginevra’s buttocks, then placed again her fingers (censored). Ginevra moaned and cocked her rear, rocking herself towards another (censored). She heard the door squeak and instinctively rolled sideways off Antoinette’s hand onto the bed.

Antoinette screamed, her face pale and gaping, her eyes fixed on the doorway.

* * *

Nice to end blogs on a cliff hanger, hey? Pity you don’t know all the possibilities of who or what could be coming through that doorway.

(Various words in the erotic scenes were adorned with petticoats, that is to say, the (censored) strips.)