Review: Ladies' Home Erotica

Writers of erotica are very much readers of erotica. When you first put pen to paper and write a sex scene, you probably do not consider yourself a writer of erotica. Time and many stories later, you begin to see the truth of your vocation.

*

I became enamored of erotica at an early age. Back then, I did not call it erotica. Oh no, it was what was sold as Historical Romance. If you were about in the 1970s and 1980s along with me, ladies, you probably get the idea. You bought the Historical Romance novels not for the History or the Romance but plowed through them page by page for the sex scenes that usually featured ripped bodices and women squirming under extremely muscular and well built men.

In my early twenties, still a virgin in body but not in spirit and after dozens of such bodice-ripping adventures, I came upon a paperback in a pile of junk in my sister's back hall. It had been given to her by her mother-in-law (!) who had found it amongst her daughter's belongings after her daughter was killed in a car accident. It was called "The Pearl" and it featured excerpts from a real life Victorian era erotic journal. The fact that it was my sister's mother in law that found it amongst her recently deceased daughters' belongings that made me, in a fever of fear, sell all my pornography in case my parents might have to discover it after my death. In the meantime, I stashed the forgotten paperback inside the waistband of my pants and took it home with me.

I perused this find for many years and still, dear reader, have it neatly tucked away in my nightstand drawer. My sister never noticed its disappearance and if she did she surely did not ask me if I knew where it had gone. Do not worry, I would have told her. I am disabled and when my two older sisters came a few years back to take me into Manhattan to see a specialist, they decided to clean my apartment up a bit for me. They kept finding these small hearing aid batteries all over the place and asked me what they were for. I finally looked at them both and said "My vibrator! They are for my vibrator!" That shut them both up.

My journey through erotica continues to this day and since finding this website, I have found more and more books about erotica. I like to review them for the site, feeling I am doing a good deed by my fellow lovers of all things erotic.

My most recent read I found especially delightful as it was somewhat of a prelude to the website we have all come to know and love. What do you think people did about erotica before the internet? How did they decide they wanted to write it? How did they get input from their peers? Well "Ladies' Home Erotica" gives you a glimpse into those days pre-internet and how erotica became what it is.

A group of like minded female friends decided to get together once a month and write erotica. They called themselves The Kensington Ladies' Erotica Society. While some of our mothers were out playing bridge in the 1970's, the Kensington Ladies' Erotica Society was not. Their first foray into the publishing world was copyrighted in 1984 and undoubtedly is hard to find in print but happily I fell upon a used copy online and snapped it up.

The works are obviously by amateurs but aren't we all amateurs. Yet most of the vignettes are painstakingly written. And each chapter has a group concept that was given out, very much like the contests posted on our beloved website. At one point one of the ladies wrote a story about a man's hands. You probably wonder how can one write a story about one part of someone's body. Well it can be done rather easily. After the author read her story to the group, they decided on the whole that their assignment for the next month was for them all to write a story that focused on a part of the body. This is the type of book it is.

It has inspired my own writing greatly as being able to read these tiny synopses of life for that is truly what they are. Each woman has her own beguiling view about erotica and although most of the stories are more titillating than dirty, they are still entertaining. I enjoyed thinking about these ladies scratching their heads and trying to think of how to stretch out describing someone's ass into an entire paragraph.

Some of the stories are quaintly dated, like in one where the character mentions buying a 25 cent paperback at the store. Oh my, the only books you can buy for 25 cents these days are used. Even my local library wants $1 for their old and about to be discarded books. So the idea of being able to buy a new book with that fresh smell and crisp clean pages for a quarter made me smile.

If the internet did not exist, I can think of a few good erotica writers I would have made such a group with. Of course finding them would have been a drag and being all over the world would have made physical meetings next to impossible. But from this group, a movement was born. So we should all hail The Kensington Ladies' Erotica Society for the doors that they have opened and the world that they were all so willing to explore.

"Ladies' Home Erotica" was published by Ten Speed Press and copyrighted in 1984.