Title: Part 6: Discovering Erotica
Series: Heterosexual in Waiting
Warning: Mentions of sex education. Too much information
I’ve never had a sexual fantasy. I can’t use a real person, because I get caught up in the fact that I don’t know them and they don’t know me. What if we don’t get along? What if we have nothing to talk about? It seems wrong to use a mental image of someone without their consent. I can’t use a fictional person either, because they’re not real, so they don’t bring anything remotely sexual to the table unless I come up with it. I don’t know what to tell them to do, because I don’t really want them to do anything (besides maybe cuddle). It just doesn’t work in my head.
I have a similar issue with celebrity crushes. How can you fall in love with someone if you don’t know them? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s like seeing a candy apple and saying “oh, yum, candy apple!” and drooling all over it. But what if it’s a prank, and it’s really a candy onion? That happened to me in church once. It’s a cruel prank. You should never judge a candy apple by its coating.
*~*
I was twenty-six when I discovered fan fiction, and as any fan will tell you, it’s a short jaunt from general fiction to erotica. Most people are kind enough to put NC-17 warnings, but not all. The first few times I encountered erotica, I was appalled and I’d X the window as fast as I could. I drew the line at PG-13.
I found that a disproportionate number of fan fictions were romances. The author would put their favorite two characters together and write a love story, no matter how out of character it was. The fact of the matter is some people like living out their romantic and sexual fantasies through the characters of their favorite TV shows.
As I became accustomed to reading the raunchier content, I graduated from PG-13 to R to NC-17. I found it incredibly educational, like I’d just found a manual not only to the male sex drive, but to the female’s sexual response. I finally understood why Sam and all those other guys in my life thought I was such a tease. I had learned to censor my touch through trial and error, but the more I read, the more I understood why I had to censor it and what they thought they were doing to me.
I always figured it was just men that were sexually charged, because the old axiom said “all men are pigs.” I didn’t realize that women were sex-obsessed too. I became curious about the process of female arousal. According to just about every magazine on the market, orgasms were an important part of sex and marriage, and if I was ever going to be a good wife, I figured I should learn what turned me on. I had read that libido decreased with age, so I was worried that by the time I got married, I’d be so sexually insensitive that there’d just be a whole lot of bad sex.
As we’re entering the territory of too much information, suffice it to say, that I was twenty-eight when I decided having an orgasm was prudent to my sexual self-education. I’ve learned that if I attempt to initiate a sexual fantasy, it only serves to hinder the process. I lose interest easily, and some days, it’s a hopeless cause. There’s a difference between physical and psychological arousal, and psychologically, nothing drives me toward sex.
From the perspective of the virtuous, Christian, heterosexual in waiting, I often worried that my foray into erotica had permanently affected my ability to accept a husband. As Christians, we were taught that pornography (face it, erotica is just written porn) in any form was sinful-it was adultery committed by the mind. Yet without it, I would have remained dangerously uneducated about what was going on in the minds of all the “sexual” people around me. Armed with this new information, I joked that I was asexual. However, I still believed I was a heterosexual in waiting, and I had to be a lot more careful about taking things slow.
*~*
Part 1: That Ain't Candy *
Part 2: The Heterosexual Paradigm *
Part 3: Clueless *
Part 4: Learning to Fear *
Part 5: What's Wrong with a Kiss? *
Part 6: Discovering Erotica *
Part 7: In the Closet