LW Notes: The Amityville Whorer

First off, apologies for the title. There's a point to it—which I'll get to later—but the shameful truth is that I'm a sucker for puns.

So here's the thing... after reading through a lot of cheating wife stories, I came to a realization: These stories, at their heart, are horror stories for grown-up men. Ghost stories. Tales to be told around a campfire. Tales to cause nightmares.

Right now, you're probably thinking "DUH!" and reaching for the mouse to close this window. But before you go, give me one more second. Because, while the central idea here is pretty obvious, its implications are complex and wide-reaching.

If we accept that these are horror stories, then the next question is what that says about the Loving Wives section—and, to a great extent, about men in general. What does it tell us about the insecurities that men have? The terrors that keep them awake at night? The ways that they view their dilemmas and the tools that they use to resolve them? The conventions and tropes that Loving Wives writers use? The readers who loyally work their way through often-sexless, often-grim tales on a site that is—on paper, at least—dedicated to sex and erotica?

A Little Bit of Justification

In an email conversation about Loving Wives, one of my favorite writers gently pointed out that I probably spend way too much time analyzing stories that—at the end of the day—are published on a porn site. After all, he reminded me, Literotica isn't The New Yorker!

It's a fair point: With a few notable exceptions, the stories on Literotica aren't capital-L literature. They're often rough and raw, heavy on emotion and light on editing. Most of the writers are passionate amateurs, with few pretensions and ambitions beyond the hope that they can spin a good yarn and that a handful of readers will check out their work and share their feelings.

That might sound like a flaw of the site, but I'd argue that it's one of its greatest strengths. Unlike more "respectable" (read "effete" and "bloodless") writing venues, Loving Wives is passionate and intense. Its writers aren't focused on impressing critics or building their egos; rather, they're usually trying to explore pain and vulnerability, flush out psychic wounds, commiserate with others and—ultimately—find a sort of healing. The same, I think, goes for most readers: They're not looking for a clever piece of wit that they can drag out at a cocktail party, but rather for a solid plot and good characters—and perhaps some catharsis, redemption, and a story that makes sense out of an often confusing and cruel world.

To illustrate the difference, here's two potential responses to a piece of writing:

"That's a fine piece of writing, Chauncey. How droll!"

"Holy fuck, I think I'm going to puke. If this ends up being a reconciliation story, I'm gonna one-bomb this asshole. Then I'm setting something on fire."

I'll let you decide which one is more likely to show up in the Letters page of The New Yorker, and which might show up in the comments section of a Loving Wives story. While you're doing that, maybe ask yourself which one seems more passionate? More deeply felt? More meaningful?

The New Yorker sells 1,231,715 issues per month—and, as the piles of unread New Yorker magazines in homes around the world attest, the actual readership is probably a lot smaller. By comparison, Literotica claims a monthly readership of over 50 million. While I haven't been able to find stats on how many people read Loving Wives stories every month, this (very outdated) page notes that LW has the most active readership on the site. In other words, Loving Wives has the most engaged readers on a site that boasts roughly forty times the readership of the New Yorker.

Is Loving Wives starting to look like something worth thinking seriously about? More to the point, does it look like a forum that has something to say about love, vulnerability, fear, and the nature of masculinity?

A Note on Horror

Horror fiction—much like erotica—has historically been regarded as a sort of gutter genre, not worthy of critical analysis. A few writers—most notably Stephen King—have done a lot to bring horror out of the darkness, and in the post-King era, it has gained a much greater level of respect. But that air of disrepute still lingers, and the genre is often packaged as something more respectable—something like "thriller," "sci-fi," "psychological drama," etc.

For the purposes of this essay, I'm casting the horror net widely. For example, I'd argue that Sam Peckinpaugh's Straw Dogs, Ridley Scott's Alien, Tony Scott's Enemy of the State, and most of Franz Kafka's stories all fit comfortably under the horror umbrella.

The key element, for me, is the sense of vulnerability and the rising sense of hopelessness. The horror hero (or heroine) is a person valiantly defending their values against a far superior force. They are rarely faced with completely good options; the best they can hope for is the least-bad of a bunch of bad choices. The fight is often blind, with mysterious and unseen villains hovering just out of reach. Victory, if it is achieved, usually comes at a high physical and psychological cost, and leaves the main character forever changed and at least somewhat damaged.

Feel free to disagree—at the end of the day, horror, like erotica, is extremely subjective.

Background: The Amityville Horror

Speaking of Stephen King, he inspired my stupid title—and much of the rest of this essay. Discussing Jay Anson's The Amityville Horror, King wrote that the main monster in the story is economic, not demonic. Sure, there's an invisible, evil presence in the house, threatening the Lutz family and slowly chipping away at the father's sanity. But, on a larger scale, there's an equally implacable, equally faceless monster threatening the family: The bank that holds their mortgage.

(Side note: if you've never seen or read The Amityville Horror or any of its sequels and remakes, think about the first season of American Horror Story, which basically tells the same story—albeit with a lot more freaky sex. And, if you've only seen the original 1979 version of Amityville, maybe give the 2005 remake a shot. If nothing else, Ryan Reynolds' acting may surprise you.)

Anyway, the Lutz family has to deal with two monsters—demons and debt. The demon slowly amps up its attacks their bodies and their souls, while a bunch of outside factors—the bank that holds the Lutz's mortgage, the slow economy that limits George Lutz's job options, the high cost of raising children, the pressure to seize the American dream—ratchet up the tension. Put another way, the demon is Bubba, the classic terrifying prison cellmate threatening all sorts of unspeakable, emasculating tortures. But beyond Bubba lurk the prison, the warden, the guards, and the criminal justice system—all of which are keeping George Lutz in the cell, serving him up for Bubba's depraved tastes.

In this regard, Amityville is a truly adult horror story. Most of the classic horror monsters—werewolves, vampires, aliens, Freddy Kruger—are a threat to the body, and play on a childish fear of things that go bump in the night. By comparison, Amityville's economic horror is a direct threat to the things that adults—and specifically adult men—hold most dear. Things like our stability, our futures, our freedom and agency, our relationships, and our ability to protect and provide for our spouses and children. And, as any parent who has ever run into the street to grab their kid can attest, when there's a choice between taking care of our bodies or our families, our bodies come in a distant second.

Put another way, vampires threaten your skin. Grown up horrors will make you endanger your skin in an effort to save your soul.

The Horror of Self-Image: The Stakes in a Cheating Wife Story

It's not hard to see the link between Amityville and cheating wife stories. Like George Lutz, the husband in a cheating wife story often faces disaster on multiple fronts. The first, like Amityville, is economic: How many Loving Wives stories have you read where the main character is warned that a divorce will destroy everything he's built, leaving him living in a crappy apartment or a box under a bridge while he pays out his salary for alimony and child support and his ex-wife entertains the local army base in what was once his marital bed?

But that's only the beginning—there's also the fundamental blow to masculine identity. Being a man, we're taught, involves taking care of your family, pleasing your wife, educating your children, and securing your economic future. Infidelity attacks all of these. In a moment, the man finds himself a failure on every level. He hasn't pleased his wife—after all, if he did, why did she go elsewhere? Instead of protecting his children, he's become an example of exactly what you don't want to teach your children—namely, that a man can try to do all the right things and still be left humiliated and broken. As for taking care of the family, the betrayed man often finds himself on the horns of a dilemma: Does he sacrifice his pride for his family, or does he retain his manhood at the cost of his children's happiness?

Of course, the Loving Wives protagonist also faces threats to other major aspects of his life. He may face jail time if he beats up the guy screwing his wife. He may lose his job, or be so distracted that he starts to fail at it. He probably will lose his social status as everyone in his circle begins to regard him with pity or disdain.

In other words, marital infidelity is a direct attack on every aspect of the protagonist's sense of self. Confronted with a cheating wife, he has to wonder if he is a good lover, a decent father, a sufficient provider, and a strong member of his community.

The Horror of Isolation

Another key link between horror movies and Loving Wives' tales is isolation. While not common to all horror films, isolation is nonetheless a recurring theme, as the protagonist often finds himself (or herself) the last person standing. Think about it—from Nightmare on Elm Street to Alien, Friday the 13 ^th to Scream, the progressive whittling down of a large group of people to one or two plucky survivors is a consistent horror trope.

Even more disturbing—and relevant to Loving Wives—is the "there's nobody you can trust" trope, in which the protagonist finds him or herself surrounded by potential betrayers. This is the underlying horror in The Thing, Straw Dogs, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Shining, Scream, and dozens of other movies. In this construction, the main character must ask himself if there's anyone on his side.

This theme carries directly through to Loving Wives, where the protagonist becomes increasingly vulnerable as his former allies often desert him:

 His wife: If his wife is cheating, he's already lost his most important supporter, the person who vowed to be faithful to him, and who is always supposed to have his back.

 His friends: The Loving Wives main character must determine who his friends are—a process beautifully explored in Patrickson's "The Dinner Party." As far as the betrayed husband knows, his "friends" may be the ones screwing his wife—or, failing that, they may be normalizing (gaslighting) the situation. This is beautifully developed in NoTalentHack's "February Sucks Sessions" and Pultoy's "What is Rabies of a Marriage?"

 His parents: The protagonist's parents are, hopefully, his allies—assuming that they're still alive, and aren't going to sell him out when the wife threatens to block their access to the grandkids. In many stories—such as Farmers_Son's "Epiphany" and Other2Other1's "The Nuclear Family," they are actually the cause of his problem.

 The law: In Loving Wives stories, the legal system is almost inevitably stacked against the protagonist. The police tend to taze first and ask questions later, while the courts almost inevitably determine that the wife is going to get the house, the retirement fund, the kids, alimony, child support, and most of the couple's shared possessions. Whether this is accurate or not isn't the point—in Loving Wives, we're dealing with horror stories, not realism.

 As for work, his community, and his in-laws—well, it could go either way. More often than not, though, the wife's cheating is taken as a reflection on the main character, leaving him humiliated and isolated. The key point here is that, as the traditional tools of order in a functional society are not available to the protagonist, he effectively becomes a person outside the law. This can work to his benefit, as in Numbnutz49's "Fire Down Below," but it generally works to his detriment.

The Loving Wives protagonist often finds himself plunged into a sort of frontier society, denied the support of his allies, separated from his strongest weapons, and forced to fight his most devastating enemy armed with little more than his wits. Effectively, he becomes Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby, Chris in Get Out, David in Straw Dogs or Neil Howie in The Wicker Man—a solitary voice of righteousness surrounded by the forces of darkness.

The Horror of Betrayal: The Wife

The main villain in a Loving Wives story is usually the wife, whose actions are often completely unexpected and seem to be totally out of character. We could talk endlessly about how men consistently fail to understand women—hundreds of books have been written about it, and it's been the subject of millions of jokes. For the purposes of this essay, though, let's just say that, for many men, women can be mysterious and their behaviors often seem confusing and illogical.

Sometimes, as in Javmor's "Imbalance," the wife's reasons for cheating are understandable, if not quite forgivable. Most of the time, though, they boil down to a handful of thin excuses:

 She is bored with her sex life or her life in general.

 The kids have left home and she's feeling old.

 She's about to have kids or get married, and feels like it's time for one last hurrah.

 An old boyfriend/stunningly attractive man hits on her and she is unable to resist him.

 She (or her husband) decides to open their relationship, and her libido goes completely out of control.

 She is seeking revenge.

These "reasons" aren't really explanations, and they often fall apart when the main character confronts his wife. As for substantive explanations, they generally come down to one or more of the following:

 Balance: She is trying to balance the scales for some sort of perceived insult or crime on the part of her husband.

 Communication: Communication has broken down between the husband and the wife, leading to her seeking an external relationship or connection.

 Lack of respect: This can take the form of an assumption of stupidity on the part of the husband ("He'll never know."), an overestimation of the husband's devotion ("We'll get past it" or "He loves me enough to give me this."), or a misunderstanding of the husband's tolerance and values ("He won't risk our marriage/life/family/sex life.").

 She is unable to control her libido (this is a particularly interesting angle, as her husband is often the one who unlocks Pandora's Box). In the aftermath, her lust destroys her family, her life, and her relationship. For examples of this, see Slirpuff's "Opening Pandora's Box" and, more recently, Hooked1957's "Evolution of a Librarian."

 She is just plain stupid (and, yes, this is baked into a lot of the other explanations).

In the end, though, even these more substantive reasons tend to crumble as soon as the husband confronts the wife. Even so, they still leave the husband reeling, as he realizes that his assumptions about his relationship are false, and that his wife is basing her choices on something that he can't explain, can't control, and can't accept.

The Horror of Shock and Awe

Underlying the disconnect between the wife and the main character's worldview/decisionmaking is a fundamental logical confusion. For many main characters, there's no way to explain why a wife would play dice with her most important relationship, or why she would seemingly turn on him at the drop of a hat. As far as he's concerned, there is usually no lead-in, no warning, and no way to prepare.

(This, by the way, is where the Martian Slut Ray comes in: For the main character in a Loving Wives story, the wife's actions are often completely out of left field, and are a total departure from the "plot" of their marriage. The only explanation is some sort of bizarre deus ex machina that scrambled her brain.)

That might be one of the biggest links between horror and Loving Wives. Horror—like infidelity—is almost always somewhat inexplicable. Think of how many times a horror movie has left you with an incomplete or insufficient explanation. For example, why did Pazuzu, the demon in The Exorcist, decide to attack Reagan? Why did Michael Myers start massacring kids in Halloween? Why did the video in The Ring start killing people? How the hell did Freddy Kruger start working his way into kids' dreams? Like Loving Wives stories, horror movies might give us justifications for the bad things that happen, but they're thin, and generally fail to sufficiently explain how the protagonist found himself in an untenable situation.

At the end of the day, most horror movies and Loving Wives stories start with something bad happening to someone good for no apparent reason. And that mystery is a large part of where the horror comes in. After all, if you don't know why the bad thing is happening, how can you prepare for it? And how can you protect yourself from having it happen again?

The Horror of a Funhouse Mirror: The Seducer

Speaking of protecting yourself, the secondary villain—the seducer—usually functions as a funhouse mirror of the main character. He (or she) often is the exact opposite of the protagonist, which heightens the main character's surprise and sense of betrayal. Here are some common pairings:

 Poor protagonist/Rich seducer: If the protagonist is poor and struggling, the seducer is often rich and untouchable.

 Rich protagonist/Seducer with free time: If the protagonist is rich, he probably works a lot, leaving his wife vulnerable to the attentions of a seducer with way too much time on his hands.

 Weak protagonist/Musclebound seducer: If the protagonist is weak or old or out-of-shape, the seducer probably is young, vigorous and in great shape.

 Physically strong protagonist/Smarter seducer: If the protagonist is in great shape and works with his hands, his competition is usually a slick talker with impressive social skills.

These are just a few possibilities, and you've probably already thought of about a dozen others. The point is, the antagonist is almost always strong where the main character is weak. Ultimately, the specific strengths and weaknesses are largely interchangeable—the strapping, hardworking construction worker whose wife's screwing a doctor in one story could be the handyman who is screwing the doctor's wife in another story. The rich guy who tempts a struggling wife in one story could just as easily be the guy who loses his wife to a young lothario in another story. The key isn't the specific weaknesses, but rather the fact that the main character perceives that he has an Achilles heel, and that is where he is attacked.