davywavy | On writing love scenes

During the course of my authorial composition recently (it was whilst I was trying to thrash out the Zombie/Samurai tale that I’ve been promising – which I have to confess isn’t going as well as I might hope) I was put in the position of having to write a scene that was mildly – and when I say mildly, I mean mildly -salacious. I was actually forced by the narrative to use the word ‘breasts’ as pertaining to the female anatomy in a sexual sense.

It was an odd experience. My mouth went dry, my heart sped up and I spelled it wrong three separate times before I finally committed the word correctly to paper. It’s odd. I can happily write that girls have Hooters, or Gazoinkers, or Wally Jumblatts, or even (thank you

mamahooch) ta-ta’s, but writing seriously about human sexual characteristics leaves me completely flummoxed and feeling like a bit of a pervert.

Writing serious, descriptive sex scenes – what others might call erotica – leaves me completely cold. A less erotic thing than ‘erotica’ I actually find difficult to envisage, and the clinical, almost scientific descriptions of sex that one finds in books has never really done it for me. This is, I think, because Woody Allen was right when he said that sex is only funny when you’re doing it right.

Perhaps this is why my occasional forays into the world of the perverse have been marked with a singular lack of success. Fetishists tend to take their personal thang very seriously, and so being met with my hoots of merriment when someone wants to call me master in all seriousness can’t help matters; and any man wearing a PVC skirt asking me to thrash him is just asking for trouble, one way or another.

Let’s face it, any human activity which shares both a name and sound effects with a whoopee cushion shouldn’t be taken seriously and this, I think, is why I feel so uncomfortable writing serious ‘erotic’ descriptions. Any love scene that I write which doesn’t feature a gay octopus and a couple of dozen custard pies feels somehow incomplete*

So it remains that when it comes to writing whoopee, I remain much happier descending into farce and perhaps I ought to leave the writing of serious, biological sex scenes to those who like their own love lives like that, and I’ll stick to the having fun part.

Now all I have to do is see if I can fit in the scene with a baby oil coated Space Hopper before the zombie horde attacks the Shogun.

*The author would like to stress to any interested ladies reading that he does not consider the inclusion of cephalopods and bakery products essential to a night of lovemaking, and will happily forego them if it tips the scales in his favour.