Please Avert Your Eyes

Sex. Sex. Sex.

Got your attention?
Titillated? Or maybe just a little uncomfortable?

You can sign me up for option number two.

You would think that a normal, red-blooded, American male would enjoy him some nude scenes, that he would really get into getting permission from his wife to dive into some explicit nekked bedtime hoochy-coochy.

Uh. Sure. Maybe.

I might give a hearty (if not somewhat embarrassed, especially in a public forum such as this) HELL YEAH, if I happened to stumble across those scenes on late-night premium cable and she said, "Hey. Why don't we watch this for a while?" I know my college self would. I can still see him sitting on a threadbare sofa with three or four other bearers of testosterone, proudly clutching an 85¢ quart of Natural Light, skeevishly leering at the bouncy bits of the Baywatch babes. What would he say if he knew that one day a grown woman would not only present him with sexually explicit material, but ask him to actively enjoy it? He'd probably write a letter:

Dear Penthouse Forum,
I never believed it would happen to me . . .

But this is sex in paragraph form; and for some reason, it is a different beast altogether.

But you say, "Penthouse Forum is in paragraph form."

And I say, "I know, right? What's the difference?" I am not sure. All I know is that there is one.

Maybe I should pose the question to some cognitive scientist--Or maybe Steven Pinker already has a book about it. I don't know. All I know is that I cannot read three pages full of bulgy leather pants, heaving bosoms and sweaty bodies entwined in ecstasy without becoming extremely uncomfortable.

Let me be clear, we not dealing with YA here--although Tiff tells me that Holly Black can get pretty gritty.

No. We are venturing into the liminal category of Adult Supernatural Romance. I say liminal because I think that this is definitely an in-between category. If it is well written, it contains just enough of a supernatural plot line to keep the Sci-Fi geek in me content while providing plenty of opportunities to satisfy those who are more sensually inclined. It's like the old Reese's commercials: You got your naked chocolate in my vampire peanut-butter.

So, who writes this stuff and why do I keep reading it?

I told you--my wife makes me.

Not really. I am completely sucked into the stories--taken by the lives of the inhabitants of Bon Temps, Louisiana and Caldwell New York.

Of course, I am talking about Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series and J.R. Ward's novels of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

I have found, after reading through both series, that I am able to skim through the naughty bits. I just kind of let my eyes slide over phrases like (and these are not direct quotations but paraphrased to protect the innocent):

I felt him poking me in the back from a foot away.

or

He freed himself from his leathers.

or

She . . .

Oh, hell, I can't go on anymore. Suffice it to say that there are many moist and sweaty bodies and body parts moving all around, testing out the laws of friction in various stages of tumescence and detumesence. (Thank you Ulysses).

Not that it isn't well written. It is. I mean it must be to work so many up into such a froth. But I find that I have to use the skim method while trying to pick up important plot points that might come through in the pillow talk.

Am I alone here? I don't think that I am.

I've spoken to some guys who will not read these books at all--because of the steamy stuff. I try to tell them that it is worth it. There is great action in the Black Dagger series and Ward does such a good job describing her Vampire culture. She paints this sexy, ass-kicking world with an anthropologist's eye for societal detail.

At the same time, she averages about six-hundred erections per chapter. Okay maybe I'm being somewhat hyperbolic. But there are a bunch of them. Enough to make you feel incredibly inadequate.

And Harris's books are funny and fast paced. She has a wicked wit, a keen eye for Southern culture, and she also provides male readers with plenty of action. Her BC (boner count) is somewhat less than Ward's, but it is still pretty high; and her men, dead, alive or lupine, still have the ability to leave the average man feeling somewhat less-than.

Hmm. Maybe that is the problem. Maybe it is not the sex after all. Maybe it is the sexual prowess of the men that inhabit these tales. They are sculpted, bold, and sometimes dead. They can transform themselves into lusty beasts. They are, mostly, uninhibited (See Ward's Zsadist for a richly detailed portrait of sex and the sexually abused man. Seriously. She really tweaks the genre with this character). I don't believe that I could ever get there.

I can't measure up--literally or figuratively. I'm not sure that there is anyone in the real world who can.

Okay. Enough of this for now. I am making myself uncomfortable. Feel free to skim all of this, if you need to. Then tell me if you find anything worthwhile.