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Writing About Sex
I didn’t sleep around much when I was young and single and this puzzled my friends. We were young and gay, after all, during a time when the prevailing wisdom suggested that once one had slept with all the available men on the East Coast, one simply moved to the West coast and started over.
For me desire has always come about as a result of something else; desire, for me, was an outgrowth of emotional attachment or personal attraction. Some friends pitied me for I clearly wasn’t good looking enough to join the party. Others, kinder perhaps, saw my refusal to join the fun as a confirmation of the fact that I did not understand the point of being gay. It was an unmooring from society, a freeing from responsibility, a denial of obligation, of fidelity to anyone or anything beyond the moment, beyond desire; it was a celebration of the absence of the need to build a lasting relationship, of the absence of the desire to commit.
I dared not tell them that I believed love and sex required us to be accountable—to ourselves, to those we loved and those who loved us. I dared not tell them that I had always dreamed of settling down with one person, that I had always dreamed of getting married, that when, at age twelve, I realized I was gay, that dream did not die.
Instead, I waited and I dreamed. And I read. A lot. Mostly the classics: The Brontes, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dickens. When I got to college, I discovered the gay writers: Edmund White, Felice Picano, Gore Vidal.
I still read a lot of gay fiction. One thing that burns me about a lot of gay contemporary fiction is the amount of sex they include. I tend to get bored with prolonged sex scenes; unless a sex scene is short, I skip over it. I recently finished reading a book which left me disappointed because while it had a promising premise it became quickly apparent that the “plot” was merely a device to weave a series of sex acts into a book.
When I read a book whose characters have lots of non-stop sex, I’m left wondering do these people ever sleep? go to work? do laundry? Most galling is descriptions of anonymous sex and numerous hook ups with virtual strangers. More than forty years into the LGBT battle for equality, more than twenty-five years into the AIDS epidemic, I’m left to wonder: have we come no further than this? Do people still believe being gay is only about sex?
This got me thinking about how I approach sex in my writing. I tend to write about romantic love which presents a challenge. I mean how do you write about two people in love and without writing about their sex life? When I write about sex, I try hard not to trivialize it. I try hard not to reduce it to some simple biological imperative requiring no more thought―and carrying no more meaning― than blowing one’s nose or scratching one’s ass.
In my first book, What Binds Us, I struggled with the problem of sex because it was important as it allowed the characters to connect with each other on a physical level which was a connection they craved.
In the book, it takes a long time for Thomas-Edward and Matthew to connect which irritated some readers and a few reviewers but I got an email from one reader who described herself as “a straight, white woman;” she wrote, in part, “By reading your story, I learned that real love does not have to be physical to be real…Reading this earlier could have changed everything for me…”
The first time Thomas sees Matthew naked he is stunned by how beautiful he is. He can’t help remembering how, longing for Matthew who slept in an adjoining room, he had been compelled to masturbate. He writes:
He did not possess the savage musculature of Michelangelo’s David, was more the David of Donatello’s imagination: slim, narrow-hipped, almost girlish. He was a beautiful white cat, lean and graceful. He had hair on his legs, long silky strands like climbing vines that only accentuated his nakedness. I thought of all those nights at Aurora when he’d lain on the other side of a door and might as well have been on the other side of the world. I thought of all those orgasms puddled on my stomach, damning as spilled milk, induced by just this image.
The story or Thomas-Edward and Matthew is mostly about the surprise they feel in discovering each other. When they finally come together, each is sure there is no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as the other. I imagined their sex would be romantic, almost poetic. I thought detailing the mechanics of their sex (i.e. who did what to whom) would interrupt the magic, so I wrote:
Flesh touched flesh. Limbs entwined: black, white, black; lips and tongue and teeth tasted flesh too long hungered for. We did everything. Nothing about either of us was forbidden the other. “No” was not in the vocabulary of our sex. I looked at his face through the V of my legs. I looked at his face above me and below me. I found I liked saying his name, said it over and over again. He said nothing, only smiled in the light and held me close.
Always before, sex had been a negating experience. With ejaculation came an end to desire, to intimacy. With Matthew, sex was an affirmation, a shouted yes. Afterwards, we stood on the threshold of something. Always before, the threshold had been behind me. And I’d stood alone.
Avoiding the description of sex in Damaged Angels, my collection of short stories, was considerably more difficult as several of the stories were about young men who worked in the sex industry. One story, “A Working Boy,” is told from the point of view of Pitch, a rent boy who takes us on a journey through a regular “work day.” He is on the cusp of committing to his quasi boyfriend, an older man he refers to as Loverman. While working one day he has an epiphany:
“I start thinking about quitting again. I guess I first started thinking about quitting after I met Loverman. Once, in bed with him, it occurred to me that we weren’t having sex, which is what I have all the time. It was something else. I mean, the moves were the same, but there was all this feeling. I remember thinking that maybe what we were doing was making love…
He goes on to explain:
When I first met him, I sold him my body, which didn’t surprise him. What I did that night was make him a present of my heart. Which surprised us both.”
In “Precious Cargo,” one of my favorite stories in the collection, the protagonist, yearning for his absent lover masturbates in the shower. I wanted to capture not so much the act of self-pleasure but the emotional vaunt of his need, the emptiness he feels in his lover’s absence:
“…I feel it pucker against my intruding finger. Open. Sucking. Greedy. Full of need. Quicksilver seed scatters. Sown on white tile. Fruitless. Sliding down the drain.”
Later when he and his lover come together briefly:
“He steps forward. Holds my head between his thighs. A pulse beats against my temple. The masculine scent of him fills my nostrils. My open mouth. Welcoming. The triumvirate of his manhood.”
For me, Damaged Angels was in many ways experimental—in use of language, subject matter and sexual portrayal. Coming between What Binds Us and the forthcoming Unbroken, both romances, with Damaged Angels, I wanted to step away and stretch myself in a different direction as a writer. I wanted to tell a grittier story to explore “dirtier” sex.
In Unbroken the sex is more complex because I needed to render a few different kinds of sex—first time sex, sex-for-its-own-sake, make up sex, sex within the context of a deep and abiding love and rougher sex within the context of that same love. The sex scenes were harder here because they needed to be described in detail but also needed to describe more than the mechanical aspect of sex, each act needed to reveal something about the characters’ emotions and state of mind. As a result, much of the sex in Unbroken left me breathless. I can only hope it does it same for my readers.
While all the stories I’ve written so far are about love and desire, not all explore the sex act. And that I think is as it should be. For me it’s always about the love, the characters and the nature and context of desire.
www.larrybenjamin.com
For me desire has always come about as a result of something else; desire, for me, was an outgrowth of emotional attachment or personal attraction. Some friends pitied me for I clearly wasn’t good looking enough to join the party. Others, kinder perhaps, saw my refusal to join the fun as a confirmation of the fact that I did not understand the point of being gay. It was an unmooring from society, a freeing from responsibility, a denial of obligation, of fidelity to anyone or anything beyond the moment, beyond desire; it was a celebration of the absence of the need to build a lasting relationship, of the absence of the desire to commit.
I dared not tell them that I believed love and sex required us to be accountable—to ourselves, to those we loved and those who loved us. I dared not tell them that I had always dreamed of settling down with one person, that I had always dreamed of getting married, that when, at age twelve, I realized I was gay, that dream did not die.
Instead, I waited and I dreamed. And I read. A lot. Mostly the classics: The Brontes, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dickens. When I got to college, I discovered the gay writers: Edmund White, Felice Picano, Gore Vidal.
I still read a lot of gay fiction. One thing that burns me about a lot of gay contemporary fiction is the amount of sex they include. I tend to get bored with prolonged sex scenes; unless a sex scene is short, I skip over it. I recently finished reading a book which left me disappointed because while it had a promising premise it became quickly apparent that the “plot” was merely a device to weave a series of sex acts into a book.
When I read a book whose characters have lots of non-stop sex, I’m left wondering do these people ever sleep? go to work? do laundry? Most galling is descriptions of anonymous sex and numerous hook ups with virtual strangers. More than forty years into the LGBT battle for equality, more than twenty-five years into the AIDS epidemic, I’m left to wonder: have we come no further than this? Do people still believe being gay is only about sex?
This got me thinking about how I approach sex in my writing. I tend to write about romantic love which presents a challenge. I mean how do you write about two people in love and without writing about their sex life? When I write about sex, I try hard not to trivialize it. I try hard not to reduce it to some simple biological imperative requiring no more thought―and carrying no more meaning― than blowing one’s nose or scratching one’s ass.
In my first book, What Binds Us, I struggled with the problem of sex because it was important as it allowed the characters to connect with each other on a physical level which was a connection they craved.
In the book, it takes a long time for Thomas-Edward and Matthew to connect which irritated some readers and a few reviewers but I got an email from one reader who described herself as “a straight, white woman;” she wrote, in part, “By reading your story, I learned that real love does not have to be physical to be real…Reading this earlier could have changed everything for me…”
The first time Thomas sees Matthew naked he is stunned by how beautiful he is. He can’t help remembering how, longing for Matthew who slept in an adjoining room, he had been compelled to masturbate. He writes:
He did not possess the savage musculature of Michelangelo’s David, was more the David of Donatello’s imagination: slim, narrow-hipped, almost girlish. He was a beautiful white cat, lean and graceful. He had hair on his legs, long silky strands like climbing vines that only accentuated his nakedness. I thought of all those nights at Aurora when he’d lain on the other side of a door and might as well have been on the other side of the world. I thought of all those orgasms puddled on my stomach, damning as spilled milk, induced by just this image.
The story or Thomas-Edward and Matthew is mostly about the surprise they feel in discovering each other. When they finally come together, each is sure there is no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as the other. I imagined their sex would be romantic, almost poetic. I thought detailing the mechanics of their sex (i.e. who did what to whom) would interrupt the magic, so I wrote:
Flesh touched flesh. Limbs entwined: black, white, black; lips and tongue and teeth tasted flesh too long hungered for. We did everything. Nothing about either of us was forbidden the other. “No” was not in the vocabulary of our sex. I looked at his face through the V of my legs. I looked at his face above me and below me. I found I liked saying his name, said it over and over again. He said nothing, only smiled in the light and held me close.
Always before, sex had been a negating experience. With ejaculation came an end to desire, to intimacy. With Matthew, sex was an affirmation, a shouted yes. Afterwards, we stood on the threshold of something. Always before, the threshold had been behind me. And I’d stood alone.
Avoiding the description of sex in Damaged Angels, my collection of short stories, was considerably more difficult as several of the stories were about young men who worked in the sex industry. One story, “A Working Boy,” is told from the point of view of Pitch, a rent boy who takes us on a journey through a regular “work day.” He is on the cusp of committing to his quasi boyfriend, an older man he refers to as Loverman. While working one day he has an epiphany:
“I start thinking about quitting again. I guess I first started thinking about quitting after I met Loverman. Once, in bed with him, it occurred to me that we weren’t having sex, which is what I have all the time. It was something else. I mean, the moves were the same, but there was all this feeling. I remember thinking that maybe what we were doing was making love…
He goes on to explain:
When I first met him, I sold him my body, which didn’t surprise him. What I did that night was make him a present of my heart. Which surprised us both.”
In “Precious Cargo,” one of my favorite stories in the collection, the protagonist, yearning for his absent lover masturbates in the shower. I wanted to capture not so much the act of self-pleasure but the emotional vaunt of his need, the emptiness he feels in his lover’s absence:
“…I feel it pucker against my intruding finger. Open. Sucking. Greedy. Full of need. Quicksilver seed scatters. Sown on white tile. Fruitless. Sliding down the drain.”
Later when he and his lover come together briefly:
“He steps forward. Holds my head between his thighs. A pulse beats against my temple. The masculine scent of him fills my nostrils. My open mouth. Welcoming. The triumvirate of his manhood.”
For me, Damaged Angels was in many ways experimental—in use of language, subject matter and sexual portrayal. Coming between What Binds Us and the forthcoming Unbroken, both romances, with Damaged Angels, I wanted to step away and stretch myself in a different direction as a writer. I wanted to tell a grittier story to explore “dirtier” sex.
In Unbroken the sex is more complex because I needed to render a few different kinds of sex—first time sex, sex-for-its-own-sake, make up sex, sex within the context of a deep and abiding love and rougher sex within the context of that same love. The sex scenes were harder here because they needed to be described in detail but also needed to describe more than the mechanical aspect of sex, each act needed to reveal something about the characters’ emotions and state of mind. As a result, much of the sex in Unbroken left me breathless. I can only hope it does it same for my readers.
While all the stories I’ve written so far are about love and desire, not all explore the sex act. And that I think is as it should be. For me it’s always about the love, the characters and the nature and context of desire.
www.larrybenjamin.com
Unbroken: The Courage to Write, The Courage to Remember
My newest book, Unbroken will be released on the last day of summer, September 20, 2013. I am excited. I am terrified. I am excited to share a story of one courageous boy and the boy he loved.
And I am terrified. I am terrified the book is terrible. I am terrified the book is brilliant. I am terrified that no one will read it. And also that everyone will read it and…see…me. Unbroken is my most personal work to date. In the story, which is fictional, as well as in life, the line between the real and the imagined often blurs. I am terrified the boy I fell in love with at twelve, a man now, will read it and know finally that I loved him at twelve, that, at twelve, I dreamed of a life with him.
Read the rest.
And I am terrified. I am terrified the book is terrible. I am terrified the book is brilliant. I am terrified that no one will read it. And also that everyone will read it and…see…me. Unbroken is my most personal work to date. In the story, which is fictional, as well as in life, the line between the real and the imagined often blurs. I am terrified the boy I fell in love with at twelve, a man now, will read it and know finally that I loved him at twelve, that, at twelve, I dreamed of a life with him.
Read the rest.
Houston, We Have a Cover
With just a month to go until the release of Unbroken, we have a cover.
After a few versions and much discussion we think this really captures the spirit of the book. I love it. What about you?
Leave a comment telling me what you think, and you’ll automatically be entered into a drawing to win one of three copies of Unbroken (either eBook or autographed paperback, your choice). The drawing will be open now through Sunday at Midnight. Winners will be announced next Tuesday, August 26.
Review the cover and cover blurb here.
After a few versions and much discussion we think this really captures the spirit of the book. I love it. What about you?
Leave a comment telling me what you think, and you’ll automatically be entered into a drawing to win one of three copies of Unbroken (either eBook or autographed paperback, your choice). The drawing will be open now through Sunday at Midnight. Winners will be announced next Tuesday, August 26.
Review the cover and cover blurb here.
LGBT Black History Month Spotlight
In partnership with Philadelphia Black Gay Pride, every day throughout the month of February, G Philly Magazine will spotlight one of the most important black movers and shakers in the city.
Today, the spotlight is on local author Larry Benjamin.
Read the feature.
Today, the spotlight is on local author Larry Benjamin.
Read the feature.
Wednesday Briefs―My First Flash Fiction
This week, I join Wednesday Briefs―a blog hop where authors post 500-1000 words of free flash fiction every week.
I posted my very first flash fiction, a short-short titled "Sahel." Check it out and leave a comment telling me what you think.
Read "Sahel" now.
I posted my very first flash fiction, a short-short titled "Sahel." Check it out and leave a comment telling me what you think.
Read "Sahel" now.
Revelations
In both my novels, Unbroken and What Binds Us, I introduced young men who fall in love and explored the resulting romance. This week, my newest flash fiction piece, "Revelations," explores the process of falling in love in reverse.
Read "Revelations" now.
Read "Revelations" now.
Wednesday Briefs - Unbroken
This week's flash fiction was brought about by a graphic I recently saw on the internet.
It resonated with me because the idea that gay youth aren’t broken is the central theme of my semi-autobiographical, coming of age/romance novel, Unbroken. So this week I'm posting an excerpt from Unbroken. In this scene, fifteen year Lincoln, bullied at home and at school, is without hope until a teacher rescues him. It is a very personal story. In my case it was a female teacher who told me it was okay to be myself, that I wasn’t broken. Her name was Fran Scioli. She died without me ever being able to say thank you. So this post is really a way for me to thank her publicly.
Silence
I spoke late and when I eventually discovered words, I spoke to my parents of little things, childish things. Distracted, they paid no attention to my words but they noticed my hands. Stop it with the hands, they said. They flutter like little birds, they said. Boys’ hands don’t flutter like little birds, they said. They made me sit on my hands when I spoke. If I was standing, I had to clasp my hands behind my back. My hands stilled, my words failed. I grew quiet. Later when I had bigger, more important things to speak of, I remained quiet, kept everything locked inside.
I didn’t speak, but I listened. I learned to hear the words between the words, the words unspoken, written in silence.
Keep reading.
Guest Blogger Nikolas Baron
With my stories, with my words, I try to create characters and worlds and invite my readers into those worlds and introduce them to the inhabitants of those worlds, my characters.
With three books under my belt, I have also come to understand the value of good editing, so I am happy to have Nikolas Baron from Grammarly as my guest blogger this week. Nikolas chose to talk about travel writing. As I read through his post, it occurred to me that his advice has broader application because we, as writers, are inviting readers to take a trip with us, to meet new people, travel to new places. Keep reading.
With three books under my belt, I have also come to understand the value of good editing, so I am happy to have Nikolas Baron from Grammarly as my guest blogger this week. Nikolas chose to talk about travel writing. As I read through his post, it occurred to me that his advice has broader application because we, as writers, are inviting readers to take a trip with us, to meet new people, travel to new places. Keep reading.
Catching Up With…m/m romance author Dev Bentham
Today, I’m chatting with m/m romance author, Dev Bentham. Dev and I first met two years ago as new authors when Carina Press released our debut m/m romances, Moving in Rhythm and What Binds Us on the same day in 2012. Since then we’ve become friends, though we’ve never met. In honor of the second anniversary of debuts on March 19, I thought I’d catch up with Dev and see she’s been up to.
Keep reading.
Return to Aurora: Micah’s Story
In today's flash fiction post I revisit the setting from What Binds Us In the two years since What Binds Us was published, many readers have asked what happened to Matthew and Thomas-Edward after the book ended. This is not meant to be a sequel but it does provide a glimpse into their lives after their original story ended.
Read Micah’s Story Now.
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