Strangeness

A short film was brought to my attention – “A Strange Thing About the Johnsons” and, oh, man, is it ever strange (http://vimeo.com/32483624)!  I do have to issue a warning:  You might find this disturbing in its implications and could probably upset the most sturdiest of sensibilities so now that I’ve told you this, use your own best judgement about following the link, okay?

I’m currently watching it on my iPod because I hate streaming and buffering with a passion and, yep, what I’ve seen so far is quite disturbing as well as, um, a bit different that what I know about this stuff.  Without giving a lot of it away – if you’ve decided to follow the link – someone said it was “disturbingly brilliant” and as I watch this, I kinda have to agree with that assessment; it’s that accident you can’t help but look at.

The strangeness isn’t as much about what’s going on but how it’s being dealt with and, this, too, is disturbing.  On the whole, it offends the sensibilities; it makes you not want to acknowledge that, yeah, this happens and the results, as depicted in this short film, are shocking.  I’ve seen the words “sick” and “disgusting” and, yep, I can see how one would react to this; hell, it even made me go, “Whoa…” and I don’t get shocked very easily about too many things.

The part I’m watching now did, in fact, shock me – again and if you choose to watch this, you will see what I’m talking about, oh, 20:53 into this short film.  I’m really trying hard not to give away the farm on this one but after I got over my moment of shock, yeah, this reaction could really happen and I can understand why it could happen.

I have to say again that the subject of this film is something we’d rather not admit exists.  Even as I’m writing this, my mind is automatically filling in the blanks about how such a thing could happen in the first place… and it disturbingly makes sense if you can step back and look at the logic of the situation for a moment.  Doesn’t mean the whole thing is acceptable or that it isn’t deplorable but, well, it could easily happen like this for real.

Alix made the original post about this (http://abrowngirl.com/2011/11/short-film-strange-johnsons/) and, in her comments, she said that while this is sick and disgusting in her opinion, the film has a purpose, that is, to bring this into the light so that we can engage in intelligent discourse about it instead of, as I put it, not hiding our heads in the sand about it.  In our never-ending war against the subject of this short film, yeah, Alix is right:  We must know the enemy if we ever hope to defeat it and, sometimes, we are the enemy and, if you really – and I mean this with the most seriousness I can bring to bear – look at the root cause, we set the stage to create this particular monster.

This film will slap you dead in the face and make you rethink the whole predator and prey thing.  At the point where the film stopped on my iPod – and for reasons I can’t figure out yet – something was said about the other person being responsible for what’s going on… and, as films go, it made me go, “Huh?” and got me wondering if I missed something and, indeed, when you watch this, you kinda get the sense that you literally came into the middle of something.  You see what’s going on but your mind – or at least mine – starts wondering about the “real” beginning of this.

As film making goes, well, it leaves a great deal of room for thought – and it will make you think as you try to make sense out of what you’re watching.  The making of it is, indeed, brilliant; it’s message is disturbing.  It makes you wonder what the greater offense is and I will tell you in advance that there are two offenses portrayed, in my opinion and, again, you will see both of them in action and you will know it when you see it… if you see it.

I’m not going all out about this one, not because I’m that disturbed but because seeing it for yourself is way better than any words I can use to describe it so if you go there, I’m not trying to spoil this for you.  Look at it – and then come to your own conclusions.  And if you wanna talk about it, well, you know where and how to find me…

P.S.: I didn’t write this to hijack Alix’s original post; I wrote about it here to “bridge the gap” so that people who aren’t following her can know about the film – and so I could lead you to her site as well.  Alix gets all the credit for the original idea!

 

More About My Erotica

Just finished eating and now I have fuel to rant and rave some more!  So, I was thinking that I’ll go back and read something I’ve written… and I think it sucks; I see errors I somehow didn’t catch, mixed up character names, stuff like that and I roll my eyes and say, “Man, you know better than that…”

Is it easy to write erotica?  Nope, not even because there’s a lot of stuff you need an awareness of and one thing in particular that’s not so easy to nail down:  People.  It’s not enough to know that people have sex or that we can be sordid in our having.  Psychology, physiology, situational awareness, character development and, oh, yeah, having some filthy bones in your body helps, along with a vivid imagination and a way with words.

It’s about being vulgar without being vulgar because while sex is vulgar, our sensibilities like it when it appears to be less than that.  Or, sometimes, the vulgarity is intentional, designed to shock, to awe and surprise and, yes, to excite.  And, no, it’s not about what excites me; for instance, I was going to write a story about a guy with a water sport fetish.  I know about it, can even accurately depict how he could have gotten that way… and the whole idea of pissing on someone and calling it fun just didn’t sit well with me… but it would have for someone reading it and was into it – but the whole idea disgusted me to the point where I couldn’t write it.

Because the more disgusting you can make the sex – and realistically so – the better.  We won’t admit it but some of us like being sexually disgusted in the sense that it all goes against the moral standards, reveals weaknesses where there aren’t supposed to be any, and how supposedly impeccable logic and common sense can go right out the window when a dick gets hard or a pussy gets wet and they need attention… any attention… and if it comes from forbidden sources, yeah, that’s the ticket!

If I do it right, it’s like watching a bad accident; you don’t wanna look ’cause it might be horrible… but you look anyway and, yep, it’s bad and you look away… then look back again.  Queasy people, you can go to your Facebook page now…

Is it deplorable for, say, a father to bone his teen-aged – or even fully grown daughter?  Yep, sure is… and while the thought disgusts, it also entices because you know you’re reading fiction… and then again, you know you’re not.  Do kids fuck around with each other?  You betcha they do but depending on how old they are, eh, they ain’t hurting no one so they get a pass… until the sister tricks her brother into knocking her up or that condom breaks or, hell, they were just being stupid; it disgusts… and it excites, too.

Think sheep and cows are for materials and food?  Ha, we know better than that, don’t we?  I’ve found that dogs and horses are favorites of those who write in the bestiality genre because it’s a betrayal; two of mankind’s most domesticated animals serving a purpose they weren’t meant to serve?  Disgusting?  Hell yeah… but exciting.

The thing that thrills about this isn’t the normal stuff – it’s the wicked stuff, the stuff we know we shouldn’t be doing but it’s being done just as it’s always been done – gets kinda lonely watching the flock miles from home and civilization and your only companion is, say, your brother and a flock of sheep, huh?  What the hell; nobody’s gonna find out…

Me, I have the audacity to write about stuff like this… and sometimes, straight people give me the best ideas without suspecting that they’ve done so.  My blogging buddy John rails against women starving men when it comes to sex… and it gives me an idea, a naughty one that might begin with a thought:  What would happen if a wife did X, causing hubby to do K… and then what kind of shit would both of them have to ultimately face about themselves and their relationship?

Can anyone do this?  Maybe not; I’ve been doing it for years now and even I find it hard to write stuff because, in a lot of ways, it’s all been written about before – because it’s all been done before – so the trick is to figure out a way to do what’s always been done but with any kinds of reasonable twist my fertile and, yes, filthy mind can conjure up.  Sometimes I succeed… and sometimes I wind up closing the document and leaving the work unfinished.

Not easy figuring out how to put A into B and in a way that hasn’t been hashed over for centuries.  Some writers like to make their characters do things that are humanly impossible while others don’t give their characters enough credit for being human at all.  You can read the words but the trick is to set the reader’s mind up so that the words have a meaning they can feel as well as they can see – and I’ve been told I have a knack for doing that because when “Tony” is about to stick it to his sister, “Edna,” well, you really want to be all up inside their heads while they’re about to do a really bad thing.

Why are they doing this?  What are they thinking and feeling?  Do they even know what they’re doing?  In one story I wrote, I had the kids seduce the parents – this is old hat, by the way.  Someone wrote me and said, “Kids aren’t smart enough to convince an adult to do something heinous like that!”

Oh, no?  Is that what you think?  Keep in mind that the person commenting had to have read the whole story to come to that conclusion and if you don’t believe this is so, um, you mind telling me why you read it… even though I already know the answer?  I know it’s because the taboo itself isn’t enough if you read, “Tony wanted to have sex with Edna.”  I write in a way that you’ll find out soon enough and the reason might disgust you… and excite you and even more so if you don’t believe it can really happen.

Again – and I’m not crowing or bragging – but a lot of people have written to me and asked, “Did this really happen?”  I figure that if I got them wondering about this, I got it right!  Of course, I’ll never tell – just adds to the mystique of the guy who has the nerve to write about the shit we won’t admit happens in homes all across this great country of ours.  Incest, homosexuality, pedophilia, bisexuality.  And, no, I don’t mean pedophilia as in motherfuckers stalking unsuspecting prey so don’t even go there.  I just don’t write about these hot-button taboos – I try to bring them to life and, yeah, if they sound a bit improbable, well, I’m the artist and I’m allowed some liberties… if what I’ve written is, in fact, improbable.

I’ve had people write to me and suggest that I should be incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized; I’ve had people threaten to find me and whip my ass because they were so totally disgusted with what I wrote… after they read all of it, of course – hmm.

Because I think I know what thrills people into masturbating the most and it’s not the stuff they’ve done as a matter of course – it’s that stuff they’d never do because we’re told to never do it.  Boy meets girl, they fall in love and have sex and, yes, the romance is nice and this is the way it’s supposed to be… unless the girl is his cousin or his sister or even his aunt or mother.

A guy’s got a thing for other men… no biggie here – unless the guy he has a thing for is his brother, uncle, father or his closest male friend and maybe he was “coerced” and maybe some goofy kid logic put 1 + 1 together and got four and, oops, that’s how many people are in his family!

It’s sometimes about love more than lust and the type of love that is often expressed… but forbidden to pursue.  “Little Johnny” doesn’t wind up doing his little sister doggy-style just because he’s a horny, depraved little son-of-a-bitch; they’re screwing because they love each other… and they’re not supposed to love like that.

Disgusting?  Well, what do you think?  And if you’re reading something I wrote and thinking how totally disgusting the whole thing is… and your underwear are suddenly a little on the small side, um, did I get it right for ya?  Did I create for you that bad accident you just can’t stop looking at?

I like to write in the first person, something I heard was kind of a no-no.  I can write in the narrative or observer style… that can be fun but, to me, it’s just words and you don’t get a sense of what the characters are really thinking about.  Yeah, sometimes, I will have my fingers on the keyboard and think, “If this were me, what would I do?” – because I think everyone who writes in any genre puts a little of themselves into the mix – it’s just easier.  I try not to write about anyone I know – that might cause problems but, hey, I can take a situation I might know of, twist the shit out of it – do the “any resemblance thing” as a caveat and, yeah, that’ll work!

I recently came across a book on how to write about sex in stories and it’s on my list of stuff to read because if there’s a “right” way to do it, well, I wanna find out about it – not too old not to learn something in this.  I know the stuff I write could be a lot better in form and function but, if nothing else, it’s fun to write it and if anyone likes reading it, so much the better and I hope you have plenty of towels or tissues or whatever you use to clean up afterward…

 

Writing Porn, um, Erotica

Feeling the need to blog, I was staring at my Dashboard and my eye caught the beginning of the comment I wrote in response to Foxfur’s comment.  I chuckled, took a sip from my second cup of coffee, and thought about writing – and what another blogger said about this – and thought, “Hell, I write better shit than that thing I read last night…”

I’m not saying it’s better because I’m the one writing it; maybe it’s because I have a “better” understanding of the taboos that comprise writing in this almost lost genre.  Okay, if you have a queasy disposition about such things, close your browser; if not, hang with me for a few.

The most popular taboos in writing like this is – and not in any particular order that I’m aware of – incest, homosexuality, pedophilia, heterosexuality, and bisexuality.  Okay, to the shame of our species, yeah, we do this stuff for real, which is why writing about such things can be, um, stimulating because of this shame in our behavior.

When I write, one of the first things I think of is what kind of “trouble” I want to get my characters in, then think of – hopefully – creative ways to get them into and out of trouble… or even deeper in the shit.  Sometimes I put in the usual “warnings” about the taboos in which they’re going to engage in, usually a line or more about how this isn’t supposed to happen… but it does.  Maybe they’re straight and married and doing stuff married people ain’t supposed to do.  Ah, but to put tents in pants and call for a change in panty liners, you gotta go to the forbidden of the forbidden and get brothers and sisters doing stuff, include the parent or parents, throw some homosexual sex into the mix – and then create some dilemmas along the way, like the reminder that they ain’t supposed to be doing this, the fear of getting caught, or even the total disregard for society’s rules about this.

Then it’s just a matter of thinking and writing of every way A can go into B while keeping human physiology in mind because while the sex itself is “filthy,” you also want it to be totally doable.

I try to avoid the “usual” stuff – big dicks, in particular simply because not every guy is so well-endowed.  Pussies have hair… or not, clits are of varying size and women either squirt when they cum or they don’t because, for me, it’s not about writing something you expect.  Guys might cum like fountains… and not so much.  Sometimes it’s not about large breasts or hourglass shapes, ripped abs, all those things our society does proclaim are attractive and necessary for good, mind-blowing sex of any kind.

Nah, I try to put “regular” people into irregular situations and even take the time to show you how and why they got themselves deeply into whatever taboo prompted me to write.  When I wrote and published my first story, the editors did what editors love to do and tried to normalize what I had written when I wanted it to be abnormal; they wanted to run the usual path such things take and, well, that’s not what I had in mind.  We did agree to change a few things to make each other happy and, sometime later, I was presented with the published copy along with a nice check for my first real effort at depicting just how depraved people can be.

I thought about the way I write and compared it against the book I wrote and, wow, not only was it not exciting in the sense it was supposed to be despite the “popular” taboos, it was sophomoric in the writing, almost as if the author had no real idea how such things happen in the setting that was laid out.  I would have done it differently, probably wouldn’t have fudged over the human factors surrounding the taboos and since I learned that readers of erotica do like a good story line, I wouldn’t have dragged out the arousal factors; the book teased more than it excited and, well, that’s no fun.

As I read the book, I realized I was re-writing it in my head, picking out the stuff I liked and would have kept and tossing out huge chunks of it simply because, in my mind, it wasn’t believable and didn’t fit the included taboos.  I think a lot of the author’s perceived problem in this was using an adult mind to get kids to do something they shouldn’t be doing or, in other words, the author, while writing for the adult audience of that age, wasn’t thinking like a kid because kids don’t have that adult mindset or approach to sex; there’s nothing that gets in the way of their kid logic in this because kids are more like “if it feels good – and we’re not supposed to be doing it – let’s do it and to hell with the implications!”  Only adults behave in the way these characters did and, well, I wouldn’t have done it like that.

Okay, I know these things are supposed to educate, as in teaching the reader not to do any of the shit they’re reading and while a lot of these kinds of stories tend to have happy endings, well, I like to write stuff where, in the end, no one is happy.  I wrote a story called “Fatal Error” for my Internet fans… and the responses I got were amazing; a lot of people were quite unhappy that the story was dark and brooding and ended with the main character putting a bullet in his head.  Sometimes when I write, I’ll do all the taboo things but the lesson is that everything one can do has consequences… and not all of them are pleasant… because in the real world, hell, yeah, they’re often unpleasant.

People get caught doing this; they go to jail, lose their whole lives in some way and, yeah, even kill themselves because of it.  Is it sexually stimulating?  Most of the people who read “Fatal Error” were both aroused and pissed off and, yeah, a few people wrote me and told me they were masturbating right through to the end.

If you’re gonna write this stuff and get all into the stuff our society says we shouldn’t do, it shouldn’t be all peaches and cream… because it really isn’t.  Now, my very first story – and probably the best one I’ve ever written – actually left people hanging – and I did that intentionally.  People were writing me and asking when I was going to write the sequel… and I knew it couldn’t be written because I did try to write it and utterly failed.  They wanted to know if the family I wrote about ever got busted for what they were doing; how did they escape punishment?  Did they continue to grow or did what they were into spread outward, impacting and affecting other families?  Beats the hell out of me… and I wrote the damned thing.

For me, writing erotica is about stimulating mind and body; I don’t just write jerk-off stuff.  One of my problems with the book I read was that I couldn’t identify with the characters – avid readers can understand this one better than I can explain it.  Yeah, they were doing all the good, nasty stuff but it lacked that certain thing that puts you into the mind of the written character and that’s probably why I didn’t find it physically or mentally stimulating.  Me, I want you to know that the character you’re reading about is doing something they shouldn’t be doing it, but I also want you to know why they’re doing it, what they’re thinking about when they’re doing the unspeakable right along with the joys and problems behind it.

I want you to identify with the character who’s either doing something or having it done to him or her and, yeah, they know what they’re doing is about as wrong as it gets… but also realizing that maybe this is the nature of the beast.  Sometimes they regret it while they’re doing it… sometimes not.  Toss in some reluctance and guilt, two powerful emotions and pit them against lust and desire while throwing conventional logic onto the floor and letting the cat shred it.

Some such books are about parents who give into the temptation and, to me, some of them resist too much or not enough and, well, it’s too corny and predictable.  Yep, I will get parents having sex with their children, willing or otherwise… and while that condition can and does stimulate some folks, it’ll also disgust some folks as well – and therein lies the lesson.  I often make parents in this really “think” about what’s going on and I like fucking with their heads in this; should I or shouldn’t I?  Do I turn a blind eye and hope what those horny bastards are doing just goes away?

It’s too easy to make them willing participants!  Real life says that, yeah, they can be, and it’s the shock factor in this that some people actually find stimulating, as odd as that might sound.  I will often give them issues about what their offspring are doing but will just as often give them their own dark secrets in this as well.  Is it exciting to see “adults” struggling with this?  Maybe… but maybe I’m setting you up with a “will they do it, too?” kind of thing?  Maybe they give in to their illicit passions and join the party… or maybe they don’t.

I could write in the style of those old books so that the people who read it can get their hands on their genitalia and do some, ah, meditating or maybe go grab their man or woman and get busy.  I do warn that if you’re stupid enough to do the shit I write about, well, that’s what you get for being stupid; I’m not going to accept any responsibility in this because I write fiction.  It’s a message that the old books failed to establish and that’s probably because they just assumed that everyone knew not to do this stuff… and they were wrong.

It’s fun to write this stuff.  Someone wrote me once – after reading one of my stories – and said that I should be ashamed of myself for even thinking about the stuff I write about and that I needed therapy to erase such notions from my mind.  I laughed and wrote them back and asked as simple question:  “Why did you read this, then, if that’s the way you feel?”  They declined to respond to this, which made the exchange even funnier.

I write erotica because I can; I love to write (duh) and, yeah, I like fucking with people’s sensibilities.  If you read my stuff and you have this sudden urge to hit the bathroom or lock yourself in your bedroom, okay, that works; at the same time, if I make you see things that can happen and puts you on guard about such things, that works for me as well.  If, say, you’re a budding bisexual and you read something I wrote about it, maybe you get to understand it better… or find out some things that’ll make you think twice about wanting to take that plunge.

Where can you find the stuff I’ve put out there?  You can go to http://www.asstr.org/~Rob_Morton and read my early works – and the name part is case-sensitive.  I’ve not published any of the more recent stuff I’ve written because I’m trying to figure out how to put it all into something I can once again make a few coins from… but that’s a lot of work.  I’m learning about self-publishing and I have the tools to do it… except I don’t wanna pay someone else to put it out there for me, like CreateSpace or other providers like this.

I like ebooks and while it would take a bit of work for me to convert all that I’ve written into the EPUB format, I can do it and then it’s just a matter of making it all available, maybe make some money, and not get into any legal trouble because when I write, my mind is incredibly filthy and controversial because I like to write about the stuff that gives the moral majority nightmares.

Hell, I’d settle for making a deal with someone who’s buying stories and paying for the right to publish them… if I could find such a purveyor and I probably could… if I tried hard enough.  I’d like to do it but until I do, it’s about the fun I have writing about such things and feeding my need to write… something.