(An update on Langston Hughes' "Advice" in ten words or less for each stanza)
Behold
The reciprocity
between
verbal and
sexual
intercourse...
and partake
Be crushed by
logos
and
eros
and kiss back
Be wanton
with words
cocks
cunts
Write/Fuck/Love
w/inspiration
Get mused with
Sappho
bosoms
Petrarch
pussy
Donne
dicks
Neruda
Fuck with
lubricant
imagination
vibrators
music
champagne
fantasies
fingers
abandon
Love with
openness
listening
confessions
acceptance
forgiveness
caritas
cooking
abandon
Enjoy
metaphor
cities
libraries
love
sex
poetry
gardens
peace
oceans
blogspot
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Gallehault?
On a bookstore prowl, I come across, leather bound, a rare book, the object of many early quests, and a very rare woman, the object (she must be) of many men's quest.
The initial object of my desire: an 18th century edition of the Old French Romance, Lancelot du Lac. The new provocation: A beautiful woman bound in black leather pants with a purple silk blouse, as alluring to me as the jacarandas in Los Angeles when they bloom in late April.
Can you judge a book by its cover? Sometimes. I am thus amused and not startled when I overhear her ask a clerk for Tobsha Learner's Quivers and a collection of contemporary erotica and love poetry.
Can you judge a book by its binding? A better bet than the cover. Just look down the spine. Contemporary publishers often deceive us: they give us a hard back cover but paste the pages to the spine, the same as a paperback book. The leather bound and hand sewn quality of this woman seems to be no delusion.
I run into the Black Leather Woman a second time, waiting at the elevator. We enter and punch up different floors. While ascending, I make her an offhand suggestion. "If you are looking for interesting erotica, especially poetry, don't forget the classics."
She looks at me a bit quizzically, then asks, "What do you have in mind specifically?"
I mention a few authors and titles. She thanks me for the suggestions, and gets off, the doors opening for her floor.
We meet again later in the classics section, a small room off on the fourth floor. We smile in recognition, and she asks me again for my recommendations.
I suggest Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Catullus, Ovid, Theocritus, the King James version of "The Song of Solomon," and, first and foremost, Sappho.
I find her a copy, and she reads: "I confess....I love that which caresses me....My tongue is broken...a thin flame runs under my skin...I drip with sweat...trembling shakes my body...I turn paler than dry grass....If you will come...I shall put out new pillows for you to rest on..."
Her eyes glint, her lips purse, her limbs loosen, she exhales, then remarks, "This is beautiful...it's remarkable... The words pierce me and curl inside. When I was 14, 18 this stuff always seemed so dry. What else is good? Do you have time to talk?"
Yes, I did have time, but Sappho proved no Gallehault. We just read and talked more and more that day.
We left the bookstore, several new books in her hands, and went for an espresso at a French bistro next door, and we kept talking, through the evening (as the espressos gave way to dinner) about literature, language, words, my career as as a professor of literature, her interests in writing, fiction, film, life.
And for months, we kept talking, just talking and conversing: through letters, emails, meetings for lunch, about logos and eros, language and the sensual. She had her lovers, female as well as male. I had my wife and three children. The conversations about all of them except my kids were relatively flat, straight, and short--mostly Hemingway prose, simple nouns and adjectives: fine, the same, ok, some pleasure, frustration, hope, some interest, a possibility, a lie.
The conversations about the literature, however, were bliss, the pleasures of the text: something of a menage a trois of Virginia Woolf, Tom Stoppard, and Octavio Paz talking, debating, pronouncing, condemning, celebrating, taking joy, giving pleasure.
Almost a year after our first meeting, she calls, thrilled, and asks me to meet her at the restauarant again next to our bookstore. She's dressed more formally than usual--a black silk dress with sheer black lace stockings. She orders my favorite dishes for us to share: an avocado and melon salad with a lime and cayenne pepper dressing and Coquilles St. Jacques.
After dinner, she asks for the best champagne and presents me with a gift: a copy of a literary journal containing her first story in print. The title: "The New Paradiso, Canto V." The epigraph is from Sappho: "I confess...I love that which caresses me." We exult, we toast, we kiss, and we toast again and again.
"What's it about?," I ask.
"Oh, it's rather unbelievable. A literature professor in California and an English woman seduce each other through the internet; he introduces her to Sappho, she has a muse of fire, and they light up the screen."
"How does it end," I ask.
"It's more a Hollywood than an Alina Reyes ending. No mystification. When they finally meet, they make words flesh in the classics section of a London bookstore."
Silly story, I think to myself. We almost finish the bottle of champagne, and she leaves me to read the story as she must go off for a date.
I read the story with pleasure, noting my favorite lines, the ones that hit first the spine and rush up it, as if we have a wick inside us that can be lit up at the top into a flame by words: "My cover opened, my pages turned, my spine inspected, leather bound....The erotic must unfold slowly, like petals opening before the morning sun....Men are wonderful at listening to themselves talk; woman at listening to others....I am just so coquettish with you--a nymph dancing in your mind....Having bitten the apple you will remain in paradise."
At the end of the story, she has inscribed a note. "If you want me to thank you the proper way, I'm yours in the classic section. Take me. (I never wear anything underneath a black silk dress)."
The Paradiso is the story of incarnation: The word made flesh. Life must imitate art. Let the word be made flesh. He entered the bookstore. They read no more that night.
Footnote 1. Here is the ending of Dante, The Inferno, Canto V, the story of Paolo and Francesca:
"One day for pastime, we read of Lancelot, how love constrained him; we were alone, suspecting nothing. Several times that reading urged our eyes to meet and took the color from our faces, but one moment alone it was that overcame us. When we read how the longed-for smile was kissed by so great a lover, this one, who never shall be parted from me, kissed my mouth all trembling. A Gallehault was the book and he who wrote; that day we read no farther in it."
Footnote 2. Gallehault was one of the characters in the Old French roman, Lancelot du Lac. During Gallehault's residence at King Arthur's court a warm friendship developed between him and Lancelot, who confided his love for Queen Guinevere. Gallehault arranged for the two to meet. In the course of this interview, Gallehault urged the queen to kiss Lancelot--and so began the adulterous passion between those two. From the part he played on this occasion, the name of Gallehault, like that of Pandarus, became a synonym for 'go-between.'
The initial object of my desire: an 18th century edition of the Old French Romance, Lancelot du Lac. The new provocation: A beautiful woman bound in black leather pants with a purple silk blouse, as alluring to me as the jacarandas in Los Angeles when they bloom in late April.
Can you judge a book by its cover? Sometimes. I am thus amused and not startled when I overhear her ask a clerk for Tobsha Learner's Quivers and a collection of contemporary erotica and love poetry.
Can you judge a book by its binding? A better bet than the cover. Just look down the spine. Contemporary publishers often deceive us: they give us a hard back cover but paste the pages to the spine, the same as a paperback book. The leather bound and hand sewn quality of this woman seems to be no delusion.
I run into the Black Leather Woman a second time, waiting at the elevator. We enter and punch up different floors. While ascending, I make her an offhand suggestion. "If you are looking for interesting erotica, especially poetry, don't forget the classics."
She looks at me a bit quizzically, then asks, "What do you have in mind specifically?"
I mention a few authors and titles. She thanks me for the suggestions, and gets off, the doors opening for her floor.
We meet again later in the classics section, a small room off on the fourth floor. We smile in recognition, and she asks me again for my recommendations.
I suggest Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Catullus, Ovid, Theocritus, the King James version of "The Song of Solomon," and, first and foremost, Sappho.
I find her a copy, and she reads: "I confess....I love that which caresses me....My tongue is broken...a thin flame runs under my skin...I drip with sweat...trembling shakes my body...I turn paler than dry grass....If you will come...I shall put out new pillows for you to rest on..."
Her eyes glint, her lips purse, her limbs loosen, she exhales, then remarks, "This is beautiful...it's remarkable... The words pierce me and curl inside. When I was 14, 18 this stuff always seemed so dry. What else is good? Do you have time to talk?"
Yes, I did have time, but Sappho proved no Gallehault. We just read and talked more and more that day.
We left the bookstore, several new books in her hands, and went for an espresso at a French bistro next door, and we kept talking, through the evening (as the espressos gave way to dinner) about literature, language, words, my career as as a professor of literature, her interests in writing, fiction, film, life.
And for months, we kept talking, just talking and conversing: through letters, emails, meetings for lunch, about logos and eros, language and the sensual. She had her lovers, female as well as male. I had my wife and three children. The conversations about all of them except my kids were relatively flat, straight, and short--mostly Hemingway prose, simple nouns and adjectives: fine, the same, ok, some pleasure, frustration, hope, some interest, a possibility, a lie.
The conversations about the literature, however, were bliss, the pleasures of the text: something of a menage a trois of Virginia Woolf, Tom Stoppard, and Octavio Paz talking, debating, pronouncing, condemning, celebrating, taking joy, giving pleasure.
Almost a year after our first meeting, she calls, thrilled, and asks me to meet her at the restauarant again next to our bookstore. She's dressed more formally than usual--a black silk dress with sheer black lace stockings. She orders my favorite dishes for us to share: an avocado and melon salad with a lime and cayenne pepper dressing and Coquilles St. Jacques.
After dinner, she asks for the best champagne and presents me with a gift: a copy of a literary journal containing her first story in print. The title: "The New Paradiso, Canto V." The epigraph is from Sappho: "I confess...I love that which caresses me." We exult, we toast, we kiss, and we toast again and again.
"What's it about?," I ask.
"Oh, it's rather unbelievable. A literature professor in California and an English woman seduce each other through the internet; he introduces her to Sappho, she has a muse of fire, and they light up the screen."
"How does it end," I ask.
"It's more a Hollywood than an Alina Reyes ending. No mystification. When they finally meet, they make words flesh in the classics section of a London bookstore."
Silly story, I think to myself. We almost finish the bottle of champagne, and she leaves me to read the story as she must go off for a date.
I read the story with pleasure, noting my favorite lines, the ones that hit first the spine and rush up it, as if we have a wick inside us that can be lit up at the top into a flame by words: "My cover opened, my pages turned, my spine inspected, leather bound....The erotic must unfold slowly, like petals opening before the morning sun....Men are wonderful at listening to themselves talk; woman at listening to others....I am just so coquettish with you--a nymph dancing in your mind....Having bitten the apple you will remain in paradise."
At the end of the story, she has inscribed a note. "If you want me to thank you the proper way, I'm yours in the classic section. Take me. (I never wear anything underneath a black silk dress)."
The Paradiso is the story of incarnation: The word made flesh. Life must imitate art. Let the word be made flesh. He entered the bookstore. They read no more that night.
Footnote 1. Here is the ending of Dante, The Inferno, Canto V, the story of Paolo and Francesca:
"One day for pastime, we read of Lancelot, how love constrained him; we were alone, suspecting nothing. Several times that reading urged our eyes to meet and took the color from our faces, but one moment alone it was that overcame us. When we read how the longed-for smile was kissed by so great a lover, this one, who never shall be parted from me, kissed my mouth all trembling. A Gallehault was the book and he who wrote; that day we read no farther in it."
Footnote 2. Gallehault was one of the characters in the Old French roman, Lancelot du Lac. During Gallehault's residence at King Arthur's court a warm friendship developed between him and Lancelot, who confided his love for Queen Guinevere. Gallehault arranged for the two to meet. In the course of this interview, Gallehault urged the queen to kiss Lancelot--and so began the adulterous passion between those two. From the part he played on this occasion, the name of Gallehault, like that of Pandarus, became a synonym for 'go-between.'
Grammatical Erotica: Tips for Sexing Up Prose
I come not to correct grammar, but to offer four basic points of advice for invigorating prose--a quadruple dose of verbal Viagra.
Here, now, for those who slept through Composition 101, let me offer some advice on writing that will never show up in a high school classroom.
Note: Each of the following four points will be developed in a subsequent post.
I. To write sexy, potent, thong-dropping prose, deploy strong verbs.
II. Become master of all the forms of punctuation.
III. To allure in prose, create original metaphors, as metaphor is to literal language what eroticism is to sex.
IV. Our writing style should vary according to mood, context, and subject just as our style of lovemaking should vary.
Here, now, for those who slept through Composition 101, let me offer some advice on writing that will never show up in a high school classroom.
Note: Each of the following four points will be developed in a subsequent post.
I. To write sexy, potent, thong-dropping prose, deploy strong verbs.
II. Become master of all the forms of punctuation.
III. To allure in prose, create original metaphors, as metaphor is to literal language what eroticism is to sex.
IV. Our writing style should vary according to mood, context, and subject just as our style of lovemaking should vary.
Grammatical Erotica, Part 1
To write sexy, potent, thong-dropping prose, deploy strong verbs.
At a moment of passion, the writer of limp prose declares, "Sexual pleasure is the most wonderful thing in life." It's true, but the phrasing is pathetic: The writer turns to the weakest of verbs, "is," to make this declaration. The writer has to pump up his prose at this point.
"To be" verbs just deflate a sentence. It would be ok to use "is" in a sentence to make a more tepid point. For instance, "Like masturbation, reading The New York Review of Books is a wonderful pleasure." But to use "is" in a sentence where you are describing the wonderful pleasures of sex conveys all the enthusiasm for sex that as a couple married for twenty years in an amiable relationship might summon up as they are about to make love on Saturday night from 11:20--11:35 pm.
The only way I would allow a writer to get by using "is" in such a sentence about sex is if the writer declared, "Sex is fucking great. Nothing beats it. Not even reading The New York Review of Books naked in a bath by candlelight."
A writer needs to insert some added emphasis--some vibration, if you will--into a sentence if he is going to use "is": For example, "I feel that sexual pleasure, heightened by eroticism or love, is the most wonderful thing in life."
Or the writer could be at once more romantic and more eloquent and more humorous if he or she wrote, "I feel that sexual pleasure surpasses all other wonders of life; yet too often we let opportunity for this joy pass us by, constrained as we are by a host of social conventions."
Here's another phrase that needs some verbal Viagra: "My desire is to have sex with you tonight." Instead, try "I want to make you sweat," or, more concise, "I want to fuck you," or, be more suggestive, "I want to make love to you all night long."
The best choice of words depends, very much, on the audience and the occasion, so that there are certainly times when "My desire is to make love to you" is the appropriate phrase, but other times, when the straight, bold, emphatic "Take me" (or "Fuck me") works best, and, yes, at times, you can and should be wordy, so that to get the point across repetition or verbosity is not a bad idea, as in, "Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me....yes, Yes. YES."
At a moment of passion, the writer of limp prose declares, "Sexual pleasure is the most wonderful thing in life." It's true, but the phrasing is pathetic: The writer turns to the weakest of verbs, "is," to make this declaration. The writer has to pump up his prose at this point.
"To be" verbs just deflate a sentence. It would be ok to use "is" in a sentence to make a more tepid point. For instance, "Like masturbation, reading The New York Review of Books is a wonderful pleasure." But to use "is" in a sentence where you are describing the wonderful pleasures of sex conveys all the enthusiasm for sex that as a couple married for twenty years in an amiable relationship might summon up as they are about to make love on Saturday night from 11:20--11:35 pm.
The only way I would allow a writer to get by using "is" in such a sentence about sex is if the writer declared, "Sex is fucking great. Nothing beats it. Not even reading The New York Review of Books naked in a bath by candlelight."
A writer needs to insert some added emphasis--some vibration, if you will--into a sentence if he is going to use "is": For example, "I feel that sexual pleasure, heightened by eroticism or love, is the most wonderful thing in life."
Or the writer could be at once more romantic and more eloquent and more humorous if he or she wrote, "I feel that sexual pleasure surpasses all other wonders of life; yet too often we let opportunity for this joy pass us by, constrained as we are by a host of social conventions."
Here's another phrase that needs some verbal Viagra: "My desire is to have sex with you tonight." Instead, try "I want to make you sweat," or, more concise, "I want to fuck you," or, be more suggestive, "I want to make love to you all night long."
The best choice of words depends, very much, on the audience and the occasion, so that there are certainly times when "My desire is to make love to you" is the appropriate phrase, but other times, when the straight, bold, emphatic "Take me" (or "Fuck me") works best, and, yes, at times, you can and should be wordy, so that to get the point across repetition or verbosity is not a bad idea, as in, "Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me....yes, Yes. YES."
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Grammatical Erotica, Part II
Become master of all the forms of punctuation.
1. Comma
The comma is to punctuation what the missionary position is to sex: It's basic, common, necessary, and overused. To write sexy, potent, thong-dropping prose, we should draw upon the full range of punctuation, not limiting ourselves to the comma. Alas, the English language offers far fewer possibilities for punctuation than the Kama Sutra does for sex, but a mastery of at least four more "positions"--the dash, the colon, the semicolon, and the parentheses--can do wonders for variety and rhythm in prose.
2. Semicolon
The semicolon is like changing positions during sex; it offers alteration of direction without loss of continuity—something like a woman switching from cowgirl to reverse cowgirl without getting off the cock. Or since semicolons make a merger of two independent yet compatible sentences, we can think of the semicolon as a polyamorous couple hook-up; two sentences, which could stay apart, get linked together to form a more intriguing, complex sentence thanks to the semicolon.
3. Colon
The colon offers possibility for a more dramatic change than the semicolon. It stops—but just for a moment—the flow of sentence, as it grabs attention for what follows. When we use the colon, the shift is not from one position to another: Instead it’s like moving from vaginal to anal intercourse. You need to be careful, however, not to insert more than one colon in the same sentence: Otherwise it gets too confusing for the reader. But consider this analogy: The masterful insertion of a colon and a semicolon in the same sentence can be a blissful overload; it is the DP—the double punctuation--of grammar-fucking.
4. The Dash
The dash rocks; it may be my favorite mark of punctuation. The employ the dash at an intriguing point in a sentence—damn, it's like inserting fingers inside a pussy during cunnilingus. The dash adds some verve--indeed intensity--to a sentence. You can, like Faulkner, circle around and around with long sentences, sentences that just go on and on, as if you are writing them on a hot, lazy summer day in Mississippi, and you are writing as if to capture the rhythms of oral speech or tale telling in your prose, but the reader feels you don't know how to unfold the point and proceed more sharply, so then you need something quicker and faster--the dash--to speed things up. For enhanced vigor, or to give your prose some verbal Viagra, you can insert at least two dashes or maybe even three or four in a sentence. Right now, my dear, I want to unfold you--tongue you--and wiggle-waggle two...three...four fingers inside of you, honeying you up and making you as petal-open as a flower receiving the first morning ray of sunshine.
5. The Exclamation
Confession: I was tempted to use an exclamation mark at the end of the last sentence. But the exclamation mark--despite its wonderfully phallic shape (!)--is my least favorite form of punctuation. The exclamation mark annoys me as much as underlining. It's like the way Oliver Stone uses music in his movies: he pounds the point into you, bludgeoning your ear, when something less loud, less insistent would be more effective. (Meanwhile, the parentheses intrigues and allures.)
6. The Parentheses
Just as it can be so much fun to insert two or three or maybe even four fingers inside a woman while going down on her, it can similarly intrigue and excite to insert two or three--maybe even four or five--forms of punctuation in the same sentence: the colon, the semicolon, the parentheses, and the dash. (The ellipsis also should never be neglected.)
7. Ellipsis
Now the ellipsis, like beautiful lingerie, can intrigue and allure. It’s at once breathtaking and suggestive. You see it, and it gives you pause, but you know it’s linked to something that will follow, so you must go forward. Or maybe the ellipsis is like when you are fooling around in bed in a hotel and the housekeeper knocks and then she enters...everything just stops, for a bit...or it should stop...but with passionate, uninhibited lovers, it's just a comma of a pause, a suspended moment, as they are cool, natural, unashamed, and, if interrupted, they just wrap each other up in their arms, smile...and then continue. Or, to try another metaphor, an ellipsis is like when you move from kissing and tonguing nipples in foreplay to move ower down...in a series of short, quick kisses..... from bosom to belly button....and then when you are all the way down there.... just lingering kisses and licks…..between and below…and bit inside…then more inside….then…..xoxoxoxo.
8. The Period.
The period is inevitable. It brings a stop to the sentence. But just because a period happens does not mean the end of the paragraph. After a period, we can start a new sentence, resuming, if you will, verbal intercourse.
9. The Question Mark
The question mark—particularly when used in a rhetorical question—can’t it be so damn sexy? Isn’t the question mark something akin to the look? You know what look I’m talking about, don’t you? What can be more exciting to a man then when a woman gives him that look? Are you man enough to take me? Are you up for the luckiest night of your life? Are you ready to rise to the challenge? Can you fuck me in a way I’ll never forget?
10. Of course, when it comes to the language of lovemaking, forget style, grammar, etc...and just moan.
1. Comma
The comma is to punctuation what the missionary position is to sex: It's basic, common, necessary, and overused. To write sexy, potent, thong-dropping prose, we should draw upon the full range of punctuation, not limiting ourselves to the comma. Alas, the English language offers far fewer possibilities for punctuation than the Kama Sutra does for sex, but a mastery of at least four more "positions"--the dash, the colon, the semicolon, and the parentheses--can do wonders for variety and rhythm in prose.
2. Semicolon
The semicolon is like changing positions during sex; it offers alteration of direction without loss of continuity—something like a woman switching from cowgirl to reverse cowgirl without getting off the cock. Or since semicolons make a merger of two independent yet compatible sentences, we can think of the semicolon as a polyamorous couple hook-up; two sentences, which could stay apart, get linked together to form a more intriguing, complex sentence thanks to the semicolon.
3. Colon
The colon offers possibility for a more dramatic change than the semicolon. It stops—but just for a moment—the flow of sentence, as it grabs attention for what follows. When we use the colon, the shift is not from one position to another: Instead it’s like moving from vaginal to anal intercourse. You need to be careful, however, not to insert more than one colon in the same sentence: Otherwise it gets too confusing for the reader. But consider this analogy: The masterful insertion of a colon and a semicolon in the same sentence can be a blissful overload; it is the DP—the double punctuation--of grammar-fucking.
4. The Dash
The dash rocks; it may be my favorite mark of punctuation. The employ the dash at an intriguing point in a sentence—damn, it's like inserting fingers inside a pussy during cunnilingus. The dash adds some verve--indeed intensity--to a sentence. You can, like Faulkner, circle around and around with long sentences, sentences that just go on and on, as if you are writing them on a hot, lazy summer day in Mississippi, and you are writing as if to capture the rhythms of oral speech or tale telling in your prose, but the reader feels you don't know how to unfold the point and proceed more sharply, so then you need something quicker and faster--the dash--to speed things up. For enhanced vigor, or to give your prose some verbal Viagra, you can insert at least two dashes or maybe even three or four in a sentence. Right now, my dear, I want to unfold you--tongue you--and wiggle-waggle two...three...four fingers inside of you, honeying you up and making you as petal-open as a flower receiving the first morning ray of sunshine.
5. The Exclamation
Confession: I was tempted to use an exclamation mark at the end of the last sentence. But the exclamation mark--despite its wonderfully phallic shape (!)--is my least favorite form of punctuation. The exclamation mark annoys me as much as underlining. It's like the way Oliver Stone uses music in his movies: he pounds the point into you, bludgeoning your ear, when something less loud, less insistent would be more effective. (Meanwhile, the parentheses intrigues and allures.)
6. The Parentheses
Just as it can be so much fun to insert two or three or maybe even four fingers inside a woman while going down on her, it can similarly intrigue and excite to insert two or three--maybe even four or five--forms of punctuation in the same sentence: the colon, the semicolon, the parentheses, and the dash. (The ellipsis also should never be neglected.)
7. Ellipsis
Now the ellipsis, like beautiful lingerie, can intrigue and allure. It’s at once breathtaking and suggestive. You see it, and it gives you pause, but you know it’s linked to something that will follow, so you must go forward. Or maybe the ellipsis is like when you are fooling around in bed in a hotel and the housekeeper knocks and then she enters...everything just stops, for a bit...or it should stop...but with passionate, uninhibited lovers, it's just a comma of a pause, a suspended moment, as they are cool, natural, unashamed, and, if interrupted, they just wrap each other up in their arms, smile...and then continue. Or, to try another metaphor, an ellipsis is like when you move from kissing and tonguing nipples in foreplay to move ower down...in a series of short, quick kisses..... from bosom to belly button....and then when you are all the way down there.... just lingering kisses and licks…..between and below…and bit inside…then more inside….then…..xoxoxoxo.
8. The Period.
The period is inevitable. It brings a stop to the sentence. But just because a period happens does not mean the end of the paragraph. After a period, we can start a new sentence, resuming, if you will, verbal intercourse.
9. The Question Mark
The question mark—particularly when used in a rhetorical question—can’t it be so damn sexy? Isn’t the question mark something akin to the look? You know what look I’m talking about, don’t you? What can be more exciting to a man then when a woman gives him that look? Are you man enough to take me? Are you up for the luckiest night of your life? Are you ready to rise to the challenge? Can you fuck me in a way I’ll never forget?
10. Of course, when it comes to the language of lovemaking, forget style, grammar, etc...and just moan.
Grammatical Erotica, Part III
To allure in prose, create original metaphors, as metaphor is to literal language what eroticism is to sex.
Literal language is naked, plain, stripped down, functional. Metaphorical language is nude: it's alluring, sensual, charged, electric--it's lovemaking as ecstatic union.
Metaphorical language is bliss: it's bringing together differences; it's uniting opposites; it's the tongues of lovers twisting and twirling together; it's arranging the shape and sound of words in unusual but smooth and alluring ways, a linguistic 69.
Plain language is routine, missionary. Metaphorical language is language at play.
Metaphor renders words unchaste, promiscuous. They lose their bond to an old relationship. They assume new meanings, new relationships, new associations.
Language has its rules of grammar and syntax. But the best writers become grammar breakers and dictionary defiers: they free words from their traditional meanings. So instead of telling someone "love is great," you write (as I steal from Katrina and the Waves), "Love is like walking on sunshine."
But if you want to write a story more complex than something found in most three minute pop songs, offer a more complex argument: "Love is not just like walking on sunshine; it can be like walking on broken glass [Annie Lennox]; or it can be a battlefield (Pat Benatar)….or a red, red, rose.
Finally, I must emphasize again: When it comes to the language of lovemaking, the best dirty talk is wordless. Forget style, grammar, etc...and just moan.
Literal language is naked, plain, stripped down, functional. Metaphorical language is nude: it's alluring, sensual, charged, electric--it's lovemaking as ecstatic union.
Metaphorical language is bliss: it's bringing together differences; it's uniting opposites; it's the tongues of lovers twisting and twirling together; it's arranging the shape and sound of words in unusual but smooth and alluring ways, a linguistic 69.
Plain language is routine, missionary. Metaphorical language is language at play.
Metaphor renders words unchaste, promiscuous. They lose their bond to an old relationship. They assume new meanings, new relationships, new associations.
Language has its rules of grammar and syntax. But the best writers become grammar breakers and dictionary defiers: they free words from their traditional meanings. So instead of telling someone "love is great," you write (as I steal from Katrina and the Waves), "Love is like walking on sunshine."
But if you want to write a story more complex than something found in most three minute pop songs, offer a more complex argument: "Love is not just like walking on sunshine; it can be like walking on broken glass [Annie Lennox]; or it can be a battlefield (Pat Benatar)….or a red, red, rose.
Finally, I must emphasize again: When it comes to the language of lovemaking, the best dirty talk is wordless. Forget style, grammar, etc...and just moan.
Grammatical Erotica, Part IV
Our writing style should vary according to mood, context, and subject just as our style of lovemaking should vary.
Just as there are times and places—-and, I hope, willing partners--for hot, quick, fast, spontaneous combustion sex, there are times and places for short, simple prose. OMG, yes: It’s morning. I’m half-sleep. I’m hard. Kiss me awake. Squeeze my balls. Mount me quick, and fuck me fast and furious, Hendrix riffing on the guitar.
But we all know there are also times and places for long, complex sentences and for our love supreme: the extensive, almost never ending lovemaking of slow hands and languorous kisses....of intimate talk and the arousal of all the senses....the lovemaking that begins early in the evening, long before a bedroom is entered, with a man looking a woman in the eye and listening to her carefully through the dinner he’s prepared for her....and ends with her riding him cowgirl into the sunrise of a new morning, taking him as slowly as the dawn coming up.
The sex between these lovers, when the clothes finally come off, takes on the trajectory of a sentence composed by Proust or Faulkner in all of its sinuous rhythms and with all of its twists and turns: His initial kiss, like a startling metaphor in the opening phrase, captures her attention and sets a tone, and his next kisses trace all along the contours of her body, pausing in places, on one nipple and then the other, like a sentence held up for a pause by a comma, and then the woman is softened and pulled apart by the touches down there, her loins opened, her lower lips parted, an open parentheses calling out for an exclamation point inside of it (!).
Now the lovemaking becomes all Hemingway. No flowery prose. Just hard pounding sentences. One after the other. Fast strokes of the pen. Action verbs. Prose stripped naked. Nothing cute. Sentences pounded out on the typewriter like fucking a woman doggie style. Drive each sentence home. Get to the point. Make her quiver. Fuck her with exclamation points!!! You've got her panting now. Short breaths. Shorter words. Do it to me. More. Don't stop. Yes. Yes. Yes. Ohh. Oh! O!!!.
Just as there are times and places—-and, I hope, willing partners--for hot, quick, fast, spontaneous combustion sex, there are times and places for short, simple prose. OMG, yes: It’s morning. I’m half-sleep. I’m hard. Kiss me awake. Squeeze my balls. Mount me quick, and fuck me fast and furious, Hendrix riffing on the guitar.
But we all know there are also times and places for long, complex sentences and for our love supreme: the extensive, almost never ending lovemaking of slow hands and languorous kisses....of intimate talk and the arousal of all the senses....the lovemaking that begins early in the evening, long before a bedroom is entered, with a man looking a woman in the eye and listening to her carefully through the dinner he’s prepared for her....and ends with her riding him cowgirl into the sunrise of a new morning, taking him as slowly as the dawn coming up.
The sex between these lovers, when the clothes finally come off, takes on the trajectory of a sentence composed by Proust or Faulkner in all of its sinuous rhythms and with all of its twists and turns: His initial kiss, like a startling metaphor in the opening phrase, captures her attention and sets a tone, and his next kisses trace all along the contours of her body, pausing in places, on one nipple and then the other, like a sentence held up for a pause by a comma, and then the woman is softened and pulled apart by the touches down there, her loins opened, her lower lips parted, an open parentheses calling out for an exclamation point inside of it (!).
Now the lovemaking becomes all Hemingway. No flowery prose. Just hard pounding sentences. One after the other. Fast strokes of the pen. Action verbs. Prose stripped naked. Nothing cute. Sentences pounded out on the typewriter like fucking a woman doggie style. Drive each sentence home. Get to the point. Make her quiver. Fuck her with exclamation points!!! You've got her panting now. Short breaths. Shorter words. Do it to me. More. Don't stop. Yes. Yes. Yes. Ohh. Oh! O!!!.
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