More about why I write steamy romance – turning victimization into empowerment

• Posted on Sep 14, 2021

Why did I start writing erotica?  Well – as I covered in my first blog post, it was to break into self-publishing.  But the logical next question is how am I comfortable writing erotica…I have had people say that they could never come up with the type of things I write about, could never even say those things out loud.  Many people find erotica threatening, something to keep a secret because it is “dirty”.  But my journey to becoming comfortable with writing erotica was rooted in an earlier successful effort towards making sex a positive, healthy, and even empowering act despite some pretty shitty things that happened in my personal life.  

To explain further, I have to reveal some things about myself that no one knows (except for the parties involved and my amazing Very Significant Other).  Yes, I write under a pseudonym – no, I am not afraid that these revelations will reveal my true identity – because like I said, no one but the parties involved and one other know these things.  Buckle up, dear reader.  This is kinda touchy.

Incident #1:  When I was about 17 years old, I worked at a place that employed both adults and teenagers.  The group was, for the most part, made up of cool people.  The adults tended to look out for us teenagers. One summer, we had a team building exercise where we all went to a local community park and played softball.  I believe it was guys against girls – that part is hazy, I mean it was “x” number of years ago –  “X” equaling big-hair-and-cassette-tapes years ago.  My friend (we’ll call her “Eden” for the purposes of this blog) and I decided we were not going to play, we were going to sit on the side and cheer the players on, neither of us being athletic and both of us caring more about how we looked in front of our hot coworkers.  Inevitably someone would slip us a beer out of the grown-up cooler  – because it was the 80s and no one was too worried about getting arrested for sharing a beer or six with a couple of teenagers.  One of the adults in charge of the cooler was also one of the hot guys that my friend and I had spent many an evening swooning over, despite his age – at least ten years older than the both of us.  His mullet was on point, he was tanned and muscled, and he flirted with us like we were adults.  The “me” of today would see that as creepy AF.  Then, we thought it was the coolest thing ever.  So, he kept giving us beers and we kept drinking them, while also flirting with him.  He flirted back, of course.  I stopped my beer consumption because I needed to drive at some point, but Eden had a few more.  He told us he had a joint back at his apartment, and that several of the other players were going back there as well – so would we like to follow him over there?  Well, of course we would, being the young, mostly innocent, and totally gullible teenage girls that we were.

We followed Tanned Muscled Mullet guy (let’s call him TMM here) back to his place.  Surprisingly (cough cough) no one else was there yet, BUT we went on upstairs to his place and he broke out the aforementioned joint.  Eden only had one puff (she later told me it was her first ever), I smoked quite a bit with him as I was fairly experienced with the stuff.  Then he started to get a little more forward with us.  He took Eden’s hand, kissed her sweetly on it, then rubbed her shoulders.  As he was rubbing her shoulders, he then lifted her long hair off of her neck and kissed her there, grabbing my hand and caressing it at the same time.  He turned Eden around, kissed her on the mouth – which she was into still at that point.  He turned to me, did the same.  I was not as into it as Eden was, but I really didn’t want to leave her alone with him, which I knew was where this was leading.  As he was kissing me, he took Eden’s hand and placed it firmly into his crotch.  I heard her gasp, she said “no” and I broke off the kiss.  She scrambled for her purse and mine, and said we were leaving.  Tears were streaming down her cheeks.  I led her to his door, where I discovered that it was one of those old school deadbolts that required the key on the inside to lock or unlock it – and it was locked.  The key was NOT in the lock.  Eden was sobbing at this point.  I looked the dude square in the eye and told him to let us the hell out of the apartment.  He smiled and shook his head no.  Then, without even flinching, he said, “if one of you gives me a blow job, I will let you out.”

Eden was in hysterics by now.  The harder she cried, the more turned on and jazzed this guy got.  I came up with a plan, as I had seen the key on a chain around his neck earlier that night.  I calmed Eden down, told her it would be ok.  I put on my flirtiest smile and walked towards TMM.  He sat on his couch and pushed his pants to the floor.  The site of his penis, hard and ready to go, had Eden sobbing even harder.  I looked at her, tried to communicate to her with my eyes that everything was going to be ok, but she was too far gone.  I dropped to my knees in front of TMM.  I took him into my mouth, and performed enough strokes of decent fellatio on him that it had him relaxing back into the couch.  I looked up at him, and sure enough his eyes were closed.  I continued doing what I was doing, throwing out a few moans to make him think I was enjoying it too, when all I wanted to do was throw up.  My hands were shaking.  I slowly raised my hand up towards his neck as I worked, pretending like I was rubbing his chest because I liked it.  Then my hand was on the key.  Before he could realize what was happening, I bit down on his dick as hard as I could, grabbed the key, and then grabbed Eden and dragged her to the door.  I fumbled with my trembling hands and managed to get the door open.  TMM was screaming in pain, writhing around on the floor, and calling me every name in the book.  He  couldn’t get up and come after us because he was doubled over in pain, which had been my goal.  I tossed the key back at him, told him if he ever came near us again my brother the cop (a totally made up occupation for a non-existent sibling) would not only arrest him, but break both his legs.  Eden and I ran down to my car, and I took her home.  I made her promise not to tell a soul, which she was totally ok with considering both of us would get into trouble for drinking, smoking, and going somewhere with a stranger.  In hindsight, of course, my parents and hers would have likely forgiven us, but 17-year-olds don’t always know those things.  When we went back to work the next day, we learned that TMM had called in and quit.  We never saw him again.

Looking back, of course I now know that was a form of rape.  At the very least, statutory rape given that Eden and I were both underage.  But before I explain the impact that had on me, let me tell you another sordid tale from my past.

Incident #2:  Fast forward several years.  I was in my late 20s, and married.  My husband was out of town on business, and we lived in a location to which we had recently relocated, and that was far away from any family or the longtime friends we both had.  We had, however, made friends with some locals.  They were all guys, and they seemed to be a really good group of people.  They had grown up in the area, knew all the right people, had all the right connections.  My husband and I were partiers at the time (I’ve since grown out of much of that, to the point of being wonderfully boring!), and by “connections” I meant that these guys always had great pot, and the occasional something harder, mainly cocaine at that time.  The first night my husband was out of town, two of these guys – my favorites, as I looked up to one of them as a sort of older brother/father figure type – showed up on my front stoop with a case of beer and a bag of weed.  They said that my husband had asked them to look in on me, have a few beers with them to keep me company.  I let them in, and we started drinking.  The father figure one then took out a vial and poured it out onto a tray I had on the table.  It was cocaine.  Having had about three beers and a few hits off a joint, I was down to snort a couple lines.  I did, it was “great” (I don’t think I would even like that stuff now, too speedy).  

Now, if you have ever done cocaine before, you know that it has a way of making you more alert, and negating the effects of both alcohol and pot.  You are WIDE awake, on fire, ready to rock and roll.  But the last thing I remember is cracking open a beer after I did two lines.  The next thing I remember, I was waking up in my bed, stark naked, hours later.  One of the guys was fucking me.  The other was jacking off and grabbing my breasts.  I have no idea how I got there, what was done to me in the few hours I was missing (my estimation was around 3-4 hours), all I knew was that every part of me hurt.  I yelled for them to stop, they laughed.  I yelled again, started crying, they stopped.  They handed me my clothes, talked to me like we had all decided as a group to do whatever it was that had been done, gathered their own things, hugged me on the way out as I stood there numbly, dazed and not sure what to think.  Had I gone along with this willingly?  Cheated on my husband with not one but TWO guys?  Somehow I convinced myself that was what had happened, despite not having remembered giving consent.  I never told my husband, because quite honestly – I knew he would go to jail for whatever violence he would have inflicted on the two of them.

It wasn’t until years later when the “#metoo” movement came out that I started to consider either of these incidents rape – and the first one I am still not 100% convinced that was even rape.  It was a crap situation, yes.  But 40-something year old me looks at 17-year-old me and thinks, wtf were you thinking was going to happen??  Years later, Eden contacted me, thanked me for rescuing her. 

The second incident though – I know now that I had to have been drugged, perhaps through something I had been drinking.  That was classic rape.  Again, I put myself in a crap situation, trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted.  But I didn’t deserve what I got.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Because I have a strong belief that all things that happen in one’s past shape who they are today, whether those things are positive or very, very negative.  Both incidents scarred me. I could have let myself slip into the victim role, but I was determined to not paint myself in the light of being a victim. I was pissed, don’t get me wrong, but something within me would never let myself turn those incidents into seeing sex as a negative thing.  Think about it – we are the only species that has sex for pleasure instead of for procreation.  That is a beautiful thing!  No turd with a mullet or two guys with some kind of date rape drug were going to ever take that beauty away from me.  I have never been willing to define sex, or flirting, or talking openly about sexuality as a bad thing – because none of those things are bad. Perhaps my horrific experiences with sex made me even more determined in later life to illustrate the positivity and sheer wonderfulness that can occur between consenting adults. 

Erotica expresses that for many of us.  Opening people’s eyes to new positions to try, different ways to express oneself through sexuality, or just to make someone more confident in the bedroom – that is the goal in good erotic writing.  No matter your kink, as long as it’s done with love (or even “like” as long as both parties are clear on the emotions involved), it deserves some written pages.   As long as the acts that result are consensual, and all parties are having fun being more open and freer, then we as erotica writers have done our duty. 

If you’re in a relationship you want to last, a marriage that you want to save, erotica is there for to help you with that. I take it very personally – I want my characters to be ones that the reader feels comfortable with, can relate to, so that they welcome them into their virtual boudoir.  

Now a word of caution – as with anything, erotica can be abused, and those of us active on social media see this on occasion with threatening private messages from the occasional creep (who then gets him- or herself deleted and blocked). Also, you as the reader need to police your use of the genre.  Are you ignoring real life people for erotica, i.e. spending your time reading it obsessively and isolating yourself from the real world?  That’s not healthy. Are you holding a kink over someone’s head as a threat i.e. “you need to do this or else I will not be with you anymore”?  Not healthy. Are you hiding it from a long-term partner?  That’s not good either.  I would say that the majority of us erotica writers want you to use our works to enhance your relationships.  Read a short erotica story to your partner before bedtime, a kind of adult bedtime story (yes, I just shamelessly dropped a link to my short story compilation, get over it, I need to make money somehow).  

So please, please – read this stuff in a positive light.  Use it to enhance your relationship, or just to take you away from the stress of everyday.  But never ever forget that you are in charge of your sexuality, no matter how many incidents have happened to you like the ones I describe above.  Your sexuality is yours.  It is an empowering, beautiful part of who you are, no one can take that from you. Use it wisely.