My Secret Life

'Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life.'
Gabriel García Marquez

Writers of erotica surely represent one of the more singular subsets of humanity. Our minds are far too restless.

As a class we seek to provoke, to incite, to gratify. Using nothing but words, our goals invariably are simple, and yet like all things human, the variety of our productions proliferates to the horizon. On the topic of writing itself, author Michael Chabon called it "the midnight disease." Nearly everyone thinks they can write on matters sexual—as it is such a universal experience for most adults—but it is not easy, especially if one wants to do it well.

Readers of erotica are similarly insatiable. Readers want to be entertained and involved; they seek to experience sensations of the most primal and intimate nature.

The title of this essay, My Secret Life, is lifted from a purported "sexual diary" from late 19th century English times. Its provenance is disputed, even whether it is entirely fictional is up for discussion. I've written about it specifically in my corpus, surely one of the strangest narratives ever composed. But, like many things from a Victorian era, it was done secretly, anonymously, to protect the "author's" identity, and presumably his reputation, some of the same caution exhibited at Literotica for both writers and readers.

In this piece in celebration of Literotica's twenty-fifth anniversary, I hope to do three things:

Discuss, briefly, three books that have affected my life as a writer (plus mention two other authors, to make it an even five, the square root of the anniversary year in question.)

Reflect on the nature of erotic writing in an online environment.

Offer some thoughts about my own role as author/reader/sexual being and muse over the act of erotic writing itself, how writers seek to elicit arousal in their readers, with some of the pleasures and pains that accompany that endeavor. Writing about sex is a most peculiar endeavor, and involves personal proclivities and imagination, and poses particular challenges that other types of writing does not possess.

This will not be a lengthy discussion and will clock in shorter than most of my stories.

The three books in question are monumental for me in multiple ways. Melville's Moby Dick, Nabokov's Ada, and Pynchon's Against the Day all have had an impact on my own work. While wildly variant in plot, characterization and story arc, these classics have several elements in common. Length (the shortest is 626 pages); extraordinary descriptions of things, places, people; and a keen awareness of readers (their curiosities and expectations.) Each of them is an exemplar of superior prose.

Moby Dick is a book neither for the impatient nor faint of heart. The opening paragraph is one of the most amazing introductions to a story ever written. Nearly everyone knows the first line, but for me the sentences that follow serve to frame a stunning tale and provide a lure that never fails, for me at least. It is one of the few books I need to reread every half dozen years or so, and by doing so I gain something every time. To me it is peculiarly suited to the month of November (when in fact the story commences), which begins to grow cold and distressing in my region of the world every year as winter closes in.

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can..."

Melville's pace is that of the 19th century; he takes his time, and expects the reader to follow along, with sprawling digressions of every sort. But this paragraph sets up several themes of the book, notably that it is a "sea tale." His descriptions of life on board are highly charged and evocative.

However much Moby Dick is a sea tale, Melville makes it universal. Regardless of your feelings about boats and saltwater expanses, you find yourself pulled in, and wanting to know more: about whales, about ship rigging and ropes, supplies for a long ocean voyage, the nature of human relationships when put into a tightly packed sardine can of an ocean-going vessel and stressed by weather, events, and the engaging, annoying, multitude of personal idiosyncrasies of other humans.

He ratchets up the tension bits at a time, but it is a long voyage, and there is no hurry. Here is the first sighting of the mysterious leader of the voyage, Captain Ahab, the focal character of the novel, who doesn't appear in person until chapter twenty-eight, despite lurking in the background nearly the whole time:

"It was one of those less lowering but still gray and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck a the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I leveled my glance to wards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension: Captain Ahab stood upon the quarter deck.

"There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus.

Melville moves things along, and huge long elliptical digressions litter the book: discussions of whale anatomy and behavior, the nature of sailing a square-rigged whaling boat in the mid 19th century, the depths of human passions and behaviors.

But he rewards the patient reader. A recent book, Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature about the intersection of literature and mathematics provides some insight into further depths of Moby Dick than I might have imagined. Cycloids, the maths of sailing, space and time, all are intertwined, and remind the reader of just how interconnected this whole business of being a human is.

Melville drags you through all the large passions that afflict humans (save perhaps the erotic urges) and his immense tale is also finely detailed. Could Melville tell his story in fewer words? Cut it down by twenty percent? Of course, but it would suffer exceedingly in its impact. I am aware of few books with such large ambitions whose words match the lofty goals of the author.

Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor: a Family Chronicle is simply the most sensual/sensuous work I have ever read. On the surface, it is a simple story of young love between two increasingly complex characters. Nabokov creates a fictional setting that in all aspects harks back to his own early life at his family's summer residence outside of St. Petersburg. Knowing that Nabokov had to leave his homeland against his will (a result of the 1917 revolution) never to return, heightens the memoir aspects of this story. He captures the early stages of awakening passion, the excruciating excitement and confusion that lust at the age of puberty entails and mixes it with longing descriptions of a rural country life long gone from the contemporary world.

The teenagers Van and Ada have an obliquely defined familial relationship, and Nabokov adroitly dances around the exact nature of their incestuous connection. Are they cousins, or more closely related?

The reader is treated to descriptions of Ada, her pesky sister, the various dodges necessary to keep servants and the rest of the household and neighborhood from knowing the secret and illicit love-makings that Ada and Van indulge during one magical summer. The tale then relates the long expanse of their lives of as they inevitably part and later pursue their careers and marriages, never quite letting go of their first primal and seismic love.

Nabokov is often described as a stylist, which is certainly true, and he is unequaled at the art of the exquisite description, a master of the telling detail. In a sentence or two, he can reveal the nature of a character, his or her essential qualities, by making a microscopic observation: a physical facet, choice of clothing, a short snippet of backstory. It is quite astonishing, and he makes it look easy. Here are a couple examples:

"Poor Dan's [Van's uncle] erotic life was neither complicated nor beautiful, but somehow or other (he soon forgot the exact circumstances as one forgets the measurements and price of a fondly made topcoat worn on and off for at least a couple of seasons) he fell comfortably in love with Marina, whose family he had known when they still had their Raduga place (later sold to Mr. Eliot, a Jewish businessman). One afternoon in the spring of 1871, he proposed to Mariana in the Up elevator of Manhattan's first ten-floor building, was indignantly rejected at the seventh stop (Toys), came down alone and, to air his feelings, set off in a counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip around the globe, adopting, like an animated parallel, the same itinerary every time. In November 1871, as he was in the act of making his evening plans with the same smelly but nice cicerone in a cafe-au-lait suit whom he had hired already twice at the same Genoese hotel, an aerocable from Marina (forwarded with a whole weeks delay via his Manhattan office which had filed it away through a new girl's oversight in a dove hole marked RE AMOR) arrived on a silver salver telling him she would marry him upon his return to America."

During the enchanted summer, while on a trip home from a picnic in an overcrowded carriage, for space reasons Ada has to sit on Van's lap.

"It was the children's first bodily contact and both were embarrassed. She settled down with her back to Van, resettled as the carriage jerked, and wriggled some more, arranging her ample pine-smelling skirt, which seemed to envelop him airily for all the world like a barber's sheet. In a trance of awkward delight he held her by the hips. Hot gouts of sun moved fast across her zebra stripes and the backs of her bare arms and seemed to continue their journey through the tunnel of his own frame."

,,,

"With his entire being, the boiling and brimming lad relished her weight as he felt it responding to every bump of the road by softly parting in two and crushing beneath it the core of the longing which he knew had to control lest a possible seep perplex her innocence. He would have yielded and melted in animal laxity had not the girls' governess saved the situation by addressing him. Poor Van shifted Ada's bottom to his right knee, blunting what used to be termed in the jargon of the torture house 'the angle of agony.' In the mournful dullness of unconsummated desire he watched a row of izbas straggle by as the caleche drove through Gamlet, a hamlet."

Further:

"To the average physiologist, the energy of those two youngsters might have seemed abnormal. Their craving for each other grew unbearable if within a few hours it was not satisfied several times, in sun or shade, on roof or in cellar, anywhere. Despite uncommon resources of ardor, young Van could hardly keep pace with his pale little amorette (local Frecnch slang.) Their immoderate exploitation of physical joy amounted to madness and would have curtailed their young lives had not summer, which had appeared in prospect as a boundless flow of green glory and freedom, begun to hint hazily at possible failings and fadings, the fatigue of its fugue—the last resort of nature, felicitous alliterations (when flowers and flies mime one another), the coming of a first pause in late August, a first silence in early September."

Nabokov can scarcely deliver a sentence that doesn't do one of three things: make you think, make you see, make you feel. He challenges the reader at every turn, but rewards your patience and intelligence, throws in wordplay and esoteric cerebral references. I am in awe of his writing capacity, his thinking, his craft.

Pynchon's work has an unmistakable feel. It is often said his dominant theme, paranoia, runs through all his works. This is certainly the case in Against the Day, where every scene seems to end with a sense of foreboding about what is to come next. This device works superbly, however, to keep the reader moving along. His characters are quirky, unique, and generally puzzling in how they handle their (Pynchon's) world.

Pynchon likewise discourages readers hoping for light fare. His plots inevitably are intricate, and in Against the Day the cast of characters is huge and multivaried, the rope woven from them coils around and leaves you with a sense of wonder and a fair amount of dread. A common observation is that Pynchon is the Master of Paranoia, and AG does nothing to dispel this understanding.

The characters have wide ranges of motivations, often in conflict both internally and against others. The clashing can be explosive, sometimes literally, and he takes you all over the world, and perhaps beyond, or at least behind the scenes. Chicago, Telluride, Göttingen, the Balkans, Brussels, all dense, complex turn-of-the-century settings, each with their own unsettling equilibrium. And his descriptions are marvels.

I also find Pynchon's ability to describe settings extraordinary. Often he uses a technique of piling up visuals to create a moody mosaic. Here's a summer in Europe:

"That summer had been memorable for its high temperatures. All Europe sweltered. Wine grapes turned on the vine to raisins overnight. Piles of hay cut and gathered early as June burst spontaneously into flame. Wildfires traveled the continent, crossing borders, leaping ridgelines and rivers with impunity. Naturist cults were overcome with a terrible fear that the luminary they worshiped had betrayed them and not consciously planned earth's destruction."

London, England:

"One morning Lew walked into the breakfast parlor at Chunxton Cresent to find Police Inspector Vance Aychrome, angelically revealed in early sunbeams through the stained-glass dome overhead, relentlessly despoiling a Full English breakfast modified for the Pythagorean dietary here, including imitation sausages, kippers and bloaters, omelettes, fried potatoes, friend tomatoes, porridge, buns, baps, scones and loaves in various formats. Robed acolytes crept timidly between the tables and the great kitchen with caddies, tureens, and trays. Some wore mystical facial expressions as well. Late risers, sandals twinkling, sought to avoid the Inspector, preferring to fast rather than compete with his all-but-entitled insatiability."

Later at a Cambridge college:

"In the briskness of autumn again, everyone reconnected. New colors of clothing had become fashionable, notably coronation red. Privileged misses appeared with their hair cut in fringes like factory girls,. The cricket talk was all of Ranji and C.B Fry, and of course the Australian season lately under way. Engineering students met in New court at high noon for mock duels to see who could draw and calculate fastest on the Tavernier-Gravet slide rules it was a la mode that season to pack around in leather scabbards that fastened to one's belt. New court in those days will still a resort of the unruly, and interest in calculation soon deferred to drinking beer, as much of it and as quickly as possible."

A mining town in Colorado:

"July fourth stared hot and grew hotter, early light on the peaks descending, occupying, the few clouds bright and shapely and unpromising of rain, nitro beginning to ooze out of dynamite sticks well before the sun had cleared the ridge. Among stockmen and rodeo riders, today was known as 'Cowboy's Christmas', but to Webb Traverse it was more like Dynamite's National holiday, though you found many of the Catholic faith liked to argue that that ought to be the Fourth of December, feast of St. Barbara, patron saint of artillerymen, gunsmiths, and by not that big of a stretch, dynamiters too."

Pynchon is a master at piling on lists of physical attributes, events, descriptions that form an impressionistic mosaic, creating an intense alluring world in which his characters can caper about, conducting their business.

So here are three huge, complex books, none of them suitable for a careless read, each author challenging the reader, revealing, leading one along. Each of them supremely intelligent confident writers, adepts of sleight of hand, and happy at times to regard readers as merely playthings in their hands and words.

Finally I wish to mention two other authors to round out the lot. Elif Batuman puts into words the confusion and vibrant intellectual ferment of a new graduate student at an elite university. Two of her works, The Possessed and The Idiot cover the same ground, from slightly different, and diffracted, angles. Her voice is enchanting, her confusions and questions and general puzzlement over university life, issues of philosophical and cognitive significance, become those of the reader. The humor is understated, universal, and authentic.

Jhumpa Lahiri captures the diaspora experience of Indian subcontinent emigres to the United States, with all the conflict and cultural jarring that inevitably take place; how one old culture (of the homeland) adapts to a wildly different one in a new, colder, not especially hospitable setting.

Every time I read her works I learn something. About living as a female intellectual in a white man's world, the kinds of pangs that immigrants universally experience: for the food, plants, and animals from their faraway homeland, the confusions of language and communication that sprout up at every conversation. Her stories invariably have unsettling events, as characters try to make sense of their strange new life in the American landscape.

So it goes with mainstream fiction, but when the activities of writing and reading then are handled in an online arena, unusual results are possible.

Writers here at Literotica are effectively anonymous, as while an account is needed to post stories (and shelter behind lest our identities pose problems at work, in the community, amongst friends and family) we are given an opportunity to forge our creations from material at the furthest reaches of our overheated imaginations without (much) fear of actual notoriety.

Readers similarly can indulge in immersion into private dreams, fantasies, various tales of alluring or illicit desires, all without sacrificing their identities. More like reading a private novel, less like going to an adult bookstore, a public sexually-oriented festival, or viewing pornography at a cinema, where identity is open and perhaps compromised. This freedom has some odd aspects.

So here we have writers writing behind a screen, and readers indulging behind a veil. What sort of dynamics are involved in such an online ecology?

Almost twenty five years ago, about when Literotica was born, the MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, an early commentator and analyst of internet communication and communities, expressed a thoroughly positive view of online life. Her book Life on the Screen in 1995 celebrated this new technological world.