We’re going to be celebrating National Orgasm Day with a slam, of course. Though we are perhaps being a little, er, premature by doing so on Friday 29th July. Still, we can promise plenty of fizz and plenty of filth, so if you are in or near London and want to, er, pop in then come on down.
Orgasm is certainly thought by a lot of people to be the whole point of erotic fiction: the reader’s orgasm and that of the protagonist. But the bit where the characters actually come isn’t necessarily the most important paragraph in any erotic story. If it was, we could just write spunk spunk spunk throb throb squeeeeeaaaaal and then go down the pub (or jump on a handy playmate and have a bit of non-verbal excitement.) In quite a lot of erotic fiction, far more words are expended on the build-up, the setting, the motivation and the physical description, with only a sentence or two being used to note that one or more participants in a bout of activity actually got to the point of, well, fireworks, internal pulsations, screaming, champagne corks or any other piece of imagery you choose to employ.
I was recently having a chat with a friend about purchasing masturbatory material and said friend mentioned being disappointed over the stuff that used to be available for fans of spanking – “It always stops just when it’s getting interesting.” Between that conversation and an unrelated one about whether or not ‘sex’ is acceptable at a BDSM event, I started thinking a little more about the whole business of the actual orgasm and its place in erotic entertainment.
You can have (straightforward het PIV, the most widely understood definition of) sex where one or more of the people involved doesn’t actually achieve that physical peak of release, and still enjoy it. You can have a wonderful time doing all sorts of things that you and any fellow players consider to be sexual, erotic or at least a bit ‘naughty’ without any genital contact at all. It’s fun when you do, it’s fun when you don’t, and if what you get out of a session or a situation doesn’t include wanking, sucking or penetration during the agreed time limits, but you go home and get yourself off just thinking about it, time and time again, then everything’s all right.
It’s probably worth bearing in mind that plenty of readers of erotica don’t actually read that ‘and then s/he popped his/her cork’ paragraph time after time with a hand in the pants: it’s quite often a killer line of dialogue, the emphasis on a particular physical trait or the description of a specific item of clothing or punishment that marks the point at which the audience drops the book and opts for a spot of serious self-gratification. Whatever works for you, works for you…