Getting cocky with my writing: NSFW.

One of the problems with being an English major is a false sense of superiority. Part of it is self-inflicted, but a larger factor is how the public perceives “us”. As the possessor of a BA in English, it’s assumed that I will be amazing at Words with Friends, a thoughtful thank you note writer, an infallible proofreader, an ace Bananagrams player, able to win any Double Jeopardy question dealing with English Language and Literature, and be witty blog writer. I’m not anywhere close to proficient with any of these, especially witty blog writer. However, my usually demure sense of self has mutated to an unsafe level of high self esteem for two reasons: most people around me have significantly worse grammar and language skill than me, and these same people encourage me to write a book.

Now, one would naturally make the assumption that writing a book is difficult, and it is. Since I’m currently in the process, I can safely say that you literally bang your head against the wall, suffer true writer’s cramp (it’s called carpal tunnel syndrome in the real world), wrack your brain for memories, and then wonder how much shit you can get away with still maintaining maximum number of readers paired with your own credibility. For instance, I would love nothing more than to write about how I went on a date with Ryan Gosling, but obviously that’s not believable. It’s a delicate dance that must be perfected. My only comfort, like my previous point, is that seriously worse people have been published than me, and their trashy novels became bestsellers. If Stephanie Meyer can have all four of her Twilight books turn into movies, then there’s a shot in hell that “100 Beers to Freedom” will be published.

I realized my personal writing hubris rose to a dangerous level the other night when I was trying to find an excellent erotic read. I love steamy stories, and nothing gets me off harder than a good piece of well-written fiction with adult, over-18, characters from the Harry Potter series (not Harry, or Ron, I promise. Gross). Anyways, my search was proving fruitless. I was getting upset not only because the writing terrible, but that it focused on the wrong parts of coitus. Women write the majority of fan fiction and erotic fiction, so I didn’t get why it was so “male-centric”.

I became so irate that I had to complain to my good friend, Mike Erbele, commonly referred to as Erbs. The conversation went something like this on Facebook chat:

Sharon: you know what grinds my gears?

Erbs: I do not know

Sharon: I don’t understand why every time I want to read some lusty literature, they have to talk about big boobs, bc let’s face it, most guys watch porn. I’m not reading this shit because I’m into boobs.

Erbs: well, I can’t say that I’ve ever read lusty literature, and I do like porn, and boobs do help things, but I really don’t know why they would write about big boobs.

Sharon: right? Bc it’s chick lit, I love seeing boobs, but I’m not into wordy descriptions.

Erbs: boobs are fantastic

Sharon: that’s not the point. I’m not saying they aren’t [fantastic], because they are. But I don’t feel like I need to read a ton of detail about them.

Erbs: I can agree with that. They’re just kind of…there

Sharon: Like enough with the wordplay, just do it already.

Erbs: shouldn’t they talk about big dicks or something?

Sharon: yeah, that’s what I’m into.

Erbs: well, you’ll just have to write your own exotic literature.

SEE! Here’s what I was saying. So many people have told me to just shut the fuck up with my complaining, and just write an alternative. And that, dear blog readers, is what I intend to do.

The only similarity I have with this picture is that we both type on Macbooks. A/S/L? TITS OR GTFO!

One more tangent. Erbs later asked me if I was reading “50 Shades of Grey”, and I knew I had to get some research from E L James herself before I decided to even try this exercise. (apparently, Fifty Shades of Grey started as Twilight fan fiction. FYI) I borrowed the book from a friend and set to skimming. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this work is a Good Reads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Romance. Watch out Romeo and Juliet, we got a badass romance tale on our hands! I flipped through some of the sex scenes, and picked up on this winning dialogue during erotic encounters, many of them in the ‘Red Room of Pain’: 

“’You. Are. So. Sweet,’ he murmurs, each word a staccato.”

“I am quaking like a leaf”

“Oh my, he’s hot in leather”

“You have such a sexy, captivating ass”

“My inner goddess is panting”

“He is heart-stoppingly beautiful”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but have any of you said any of these things, or felt any of these things during an intimate moment? Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but I never have said anything remotely close to this nonsense. That’s another huge problem. Similar to pornography, people write erotic novels that are too good, too unrealistic. There’s no way that real sex is ever going to be as good as what you read online or download on YouPorn. If sex was always as good as it was in the movies or in that one library scene in the opening chapters of Ian McEwan’s “Atonement”, then none of us would have jobs because we’d just spend all day fucking.  “Girls”, that HBO show I mentioned a while back, is probably the best example of what a real sex life is like, at least from my mid 20s perspective.

And so, without any further ado, I present to you my first stab at erotic fiction.  So, don’t read this at work or with your parents (God, I hope my Mom isn’t reading this), because it’s about to get sexy up in here. In the next few paragraphs, you will read a little bit of lusty lit that features true anecdotes I’ve collected from a variety of sex stories I’ve heard firsthand over the years. My apologies if you recognize yourself.  Here’s how the characters of “50 Shades of Grey”, Ana and Christian, would act if they met in the real world.

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“Wow, dinner was great,” Anastasia said, “I’m so stuffed”. Christian looked at her a little skeptically. “You mean you don’t have room for dessert?” Anastasia threw her hands up in mock defeat. “Nope, not another bite!”

“Well,” said Christian a little mischievously, “maybe we can go back to my place an grab another drink”. Ana giggled and hiccupped because she ate her food and drank her wine too fast. She sounded like a manatee. “I guess one drink can’t hurt, shall we?” The waiter arrived with the check, and Christian swiftly pulled his wallet and handed his credit card over with practiced precision.

“Are you sure I can’t grab my half?” Ana pleaded.

“No, it’s on me” Christian Grey said sincerely, trying to look down her shirt and noticing that she had spilled pasta sauce on her blouse. Now he couldn’t stop staring at that.

“Please, I insist”

“It’s fine, you’ll grab the next one” Christian reassured her.

Ana inwardly smiled. “NEXT ONE!!! OH MY GOD, HE WANTS TO SEE ME AGAIN. I CAN’T WAIT TO PICK OUT NAMES FOR OUR KIDS. Oh, but I better put out tonight so he’s still interested. Shit, I hope I remembered to not wear underwear with period stains on it”.

Christina grabbed his coat and tried to gauge whether or not she’d be the type of girl who’d be on the Pill or not.

As Ana stood up, a cascade of food crumbs fell from her. “Oops!” she giggled, “I guess you really can’t take it with you”. She was a little drunk.

Ana stumbled to her car, but Christian offered to drive her in his much nicer, non-Ford Taurus. She graciously accepted, because a DUI would pretty much ruin everything. The inside of his car smelled clean, but she noticed that he had berry-flavored chapstick. She grimaced. Why couldn’t he hide his lady products?

Christian didn’t live too far from the restaurant. Which was lucky, because Ana really had to pee. He opened the door to his significantly nicer apartment than her, and Ana wasn’t sure if she should take her shoes off. That’s when she realized her socks didn’t match. Fuck. Should she take those off too? What if her feet were sweating?

“You can leave your shoes on, if you’re more comfortable,” Christian said, noticing her anguish.  “The bathroom is just down the hall”

Ana headed down the plush carpet and couldn’t help but notice that he had some cliché photographs of New York City framed on his wall. He wasn’t even from New York, he was from Indiana. Whatever. His bathroom was very clean, but there were those incense reed diffusers and candles. Jesus. She was lucky if she could find her nail polish remover in her bathroom, let alone adorn it. She peed quickly, and came back to find Christian in the kitchen, pouring two glasses of white wine.

“God,” her drunken mind thought, “What if he didn’t put on his chapstick and his lips are terrible, like kissing sandpaper?” Shit, what if he has a tiny penis? If I drink more, it will look bigger”.

Christian offered Ana some wine and hoped she didn’t take a dump in his bathroom.

They drank their wine and had meaningless conversation that neither of them could remember, and it’s not worth typing here. Nobody cares that they both read Thomas Hardy in college. Stop trying to make it all a literary allusion.

At some point. Christian mentioned that his favorite TV show was the West Wing. “Oh!” Ana shouted, “I need to watch that!! I’ve never seen that and everyone says it’s sooooo good!”

“Well, I have a television over here, and I think I have Season 1 on DVD. Want to watch the pilot?”

Ana eagerly agreed. She couldn’t remember if the West Wing was the show with the same guy who played the athlete from the Breakfast Club or not.

Christian put the DVD in, and sat down on the couch. He put his arm around Ana, and she nestled closer to him. She smelled his nice man smell, and now couldn’t remember if she put on deodorant. The show started playing, but she couldn’t really focus. She was so into Christian that she didn’t care that Martin Sheen hadn’t even made it on the screen yet. She looked up at Christian and noticed that his face looked a lot fatter at this angle than it did across the dinner table. She didn’t care. He looked down at her face and then down her shirt. The sauce stain was still there. He didn’t want to look at that anymore, so he bent his face closer to hers, and they started making out. They both tasted like mediocre Italian food.

The kiss was cautious at first, but since it was fueled by vodka, wine, and marinara, it ended up getting more involved. He gently pushed her down on his couch, and Ana wasn’t sure what to do with her glass of wine. Her arms were too short to reach the coffee table. Christian had no idea what was going on with her awkward struggle, and they never broke the kiss.

“Oh God, oh God, he has such nice things” Ana frantically thought, “What if I spill wine on his couch? What if I spill wine on his carpet? Maybe I can nudge the coffee table over with my foot and sneak it over, so he won’t notice…”

With her shoes still on, Ana tried to curl her foot around one of the table legs, but accidently kneed Christian. The kiss broke, and Ana was embarrassed that she got caught.

“Sorry, I just didn’t know what to do with my wine. Your glass magically disappeared and I don’t want to ruin your nice things…” she said sheepishly. He looked at her like she was brain-dead, and put her wine on the table. “Now, where were he…” he said confidently.

They got back to making out, and Christian began to unbutton her blouse. She had just washed it, so the buttonholes shrunk. He was having difficulty and just decided to take her shirt off without unbuttoning it. He tugged it up, and tried to lift it over her head, only to have it get caught on her face.

“Shit, I think I’m stuck!” a muffled Ana said. Christian tried to pull the shirt back down, but then it ended up being a weird shoulder circle scarf. At least Ana could see, and she managed to unbutton all of her buttons that were amassed by her chin.  They started kissing again, and Ana began to run her hands up and down Christian’s back. Her hands shifted, and she tried to take off his shirt. She moved her hands down his side, only to find out he was ticklish by his ribs. He broke the kiss to start laughing. “Jesus, did I do something” Ana though. “Oh god, what if he realized that my right boob is bigger than my left?” She gave him a quizzical glance and he decided to take off his own shirt. Naturally, he did it in one smooth motion and didn’t get stuck. She was upset to realize that his undershirt didn’t have a hole in it, especially not in the armpit. Her bra was currently held together with a safety pin on one side because her roommate’s dog chewed up one of her straps.

Christian decided to speed things up, and took off her bra. He didn’t see her safety pin or her mismatched boobs, because, let’s face it, there were woman’s boobs in front of him. They looked like boobs. Normal boobs. Regular boobs.

Christian went to town on them. No motor boating, thank God. “Bite them harder” Ana begged, and he complied. “Ow! Too much!” she said, and she feared that he ended up wrenching it off her, like some weird game of bobbing for apples. She started fumbling with his pants zipper, but her arms were too short to reach his belt. She wanted to change things up, so she gestured that she wanted to flip him over.

“I like to be on top!” she crowed. With this new dynamic, they started making out again. Still kissing, Ana tried to snake her arm down and reach the forbidden under the belt territory. She heard something pop. “Oh god, what if I dislocated my arm…no, it was just my shoulder cracking”.

She stopped kissing him and moved down his not chiseled body. He was average looking, with a small beer belly and weird hair patterns on his chest. Finally, she reached a comfortable distance where she could take his belt of and unzip his pants. She slid them off and saw his absolutely normal sized erection poking through his boxers. He wasn’t turgid or pulsating. He was a little crooked but thankfully not miniscule. Still, she had definitely put bigger things in her mouth, and that item was something you could order off the Taco Bell Menu.

She was about to go down on him, when he puller her head up and said, “Don’t, I don’t want to come yet”.

“That’s good,” she said, “I’m not very good at this”. Shit. She didn’t mean to say that at all, even if it was true.

He flipped her over again, and then attempted to take her pants off. They went off fine until he hit her knees, and then they got stuck. Ana blushed.

“Oh, I have big calves because I run. It’s weird because I’m so small, so I wear little girl’s jeans, but then my calves are Olympian”

The last thing Christian wanted to hear was anything at all related to little girls. With a sharp tug, he got her pants off. Her calves looked normal. This girl was batshit.

After a bit more fumbling and kissing, he took her underwear off. He pressed against her, and Ana gasped. “Oh shit, I hope I remembered to shave my legs”. She didn’t. He didn’t notice, but she apologized anyways. Now he noticed.

She put her hands around the waistband of his boxers and pulled them clean down. His average penis greeted her. There’s nothing more to say about it because guys in real life have average penises. And average is always smaller than you thought it’d be.

“Do you have anything?” she asked. Christian stood up to get a condom, and she continued, “I used to be on the Pill, but then I had to stop because it totally fucked up my mood and I went totally crazy. Like, I cried all the time. Then I stopped, and my period was like way off schedule. I didn’t know what to do, and then I’m like, I’m my own woman, I can do this without hormones. Just be smart. Be prepared! Boy scout style!”

“Let’s not talk about this” Christian said. He got back on top of her, and slipped the absolutely normal sized condom on his normal erection. He was about to enter her, but he couldn’t figure it out. “Not there!” she shouted. He looked down to guide it properly, and then she brought her hand down to help him.

“It’s like me with earrings” she said, “I can totally do it by feel. Like I can stick anything in that hole and not have to look. I guess my vagina is the same way!”

“Let’s pretend it’s night, and you can’t talk anymore”, Christian sighed.

Eventually, after he jabbed her like a piñata at a birthday party, he finally got in.

“Wow, that feels really good!” said Ana, who felt as much stimulation as she did when she walked on a moving sidewalk.  Christian wished he wasn’t wearing a condom, but he knew he’d finish.

She folded her legs up and kneed him again. “Sorry!” she began to say, but then he put his hand down on her face, “shhh, stop talking, just enjoy”. Ana was worried she may have hit his spleen and he might be bleeding out, but they’d never know because can you even see that on an x-ray? She stopped pursuing the thought because miraculously, he hit her G-spot. She gasped with surprise. “Ahh, right there!”

Christian tried to capture lightening in a bottle, and recreate that winning maneuver. He couldn’t because his lower body hurt from being constantly kneed.

“Maybe we can change positions…what if you bend like this and move your arm like this?” he suggested.

Ana tried to base her new position based on his vague directions. She looked like an origami crane that got ran over by a car.

“Like this?” she asked.

“No, why is your face like that? Your legs should be here, and I have no idea why you’re on your side,” Christian said. “I thought you said you were flexible”.

“I run, I don’t do yoga” Ana explained. “I’d be so good if you were attached to the front of me, or if you were a hurdle or something. My calves are really strong. Whatever just move me. “

Christian just put her flat on her stomach, and they started again. “OH, that feels AMAZING” Ana said loudly. It did feel better, and she was excited she didn’t have to do anything. “I’m so close” she lied.

Christian wasn’t, so he hurried up to meet her timetable. He went quicker, and Ana felt like someone was hitting the lid of jar of pickles that wouldn’t open. It didn’t feel that bad. Some of his sweat fell on her back. She hoped it was his sweat.  Oh no, what if it was his spleen bleeding out…

She knew she had to rush him to the ER. “I’m almost there. Please, just keep doing that!” she shouted, fearing for his safety.

Christian jabbed her one more time, and now there’s a lot of semen in a condom. Boom goes the dynamite. He was so tired from his sprint performance that he fell down on top of her. Ana’s face was buried in the pillow. At first, the intimacy felt really nice. Then, she wondered if she wasn’t feeling this euphoria because she was hypoxic. She turned her face up so she could get in a small wisp of oxygen. It stopped feeling nice. She just wanted to crack her back.

“That was really incredible!” Anna mumbled into the pillow. Christian finally scooted off, and they both sat up on the couch. “Wow, just wow”

“Thanks, not too bad yourself there”. He just wanted to lie in his bed and watch 30 Rock. She just wanted to go home and stop at 711 to pick up a snack-sized box of Oreos, and then stream 30 Rock on her laptop. Both of them didn’t move because they didn’t want to appear rude.

“Well…that was nice. Maybe I should get going. I have work tomorrow”. She was already scouting out where her clothing had landed.

“I’ll grab you some water. Are you good to drive?” he asked.

“Yeah, totally perfect once I find my underwear”.

Christian retrieved her mismatched socks, and got some ice water along the way. A couple of minutes later, she was dressed. He walked her to the door.

“Thanks for coming over for that drink” he said, genuinely.

“Yeah, I’m glad I did!” she gushed.

Ana walked out, and Christian shut the door behind her. One year later, they were engaged because they realized that they were tired of mindless sex with other people, and just wanted consistency. Ana eventually learned how to have an orgasm with Christian, and he figured out that she always forgot to shave her knees.

THE END

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you write a sex story. Have a great weekend.