Woody Allen famously said that “Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.”
But what if you could combine the two? Wouldn’t that be a blast!
I started to think about this when reading a review of one of my books, which has the slightly cumbersome title of “When only a sexy, mature woman will do (1)”.
Donna, the reviewer, commented on amazon, “Five stars… Read this book because you will laugh, and cum a lot.”
Phew! I must be doing something right, I thought. Maybe I can develop this further.
Then I read the same reviewer’s comments on my book “Tell her she’s pretty!”: “It will make you laugh and cum a bit”.
That actually made me laugh because the idea of “cumming a bit” did not seem like such a fabulous endorsement.
By this time, I figured that Donna must be giggling her way through steamy erotica on a regular basis, sometimes cumming a lot, sometimes cumming a bit, and sometimes (for tragedy does occasionally strike in this world) cumming not even a little bit.
Still, all things considered, what a very happy camper Donna must be!
So how, exactly, does one tickle the funny bone as well as all the other erogenous zones? Is it possible to put the ‘gas’ into orgasm?
First off, there’s a difference between erotica that’s good and makes you laugh and erotica that’s so bad it makes you laugh.
Seen in the cold light of day, the things people do during sex are quite ridiculous, aren’t they? My expertise is limited of course, but most of seems to involve one person putting some part of her or his body onto or into some part of someone else’s body. I think that’s the basics. Importantly, these are all parts that you would, in the normal course of work and travel for example, not wish to touch with a barge-pole (so to speak).
That’s got to be funny, hasn’t it? I’d say the art of the erotica writer, half the time, is to make sure that it’s not funny!
But still, you can see the comic potential. Some of the naughtier things that people do are even more inherently comic than ‘pure sex’ (and there’s a contradiction in terms!). After all, as one wag once said, “Kinky is using a feather. Perverted is using the whole chicken.”
Another opportunity for humor, I reckon, lies in the fact that making someone laugh is an important part of seduction. So if you can depict a scene where someone makes someone else giggle, that will help in making it a realistic and exciting seduction. And you can bet that if your reader is laughing (or at least smirking), then she (or he) will be in the mood for more…
In an erotic story, people are very often taking things very seriously indeed. That itself creates the opportunity for humor, whether to puncture the pomposity or just because the reader is ready for something a little lighter. Just think of the comic interludes in Shakespeare’s tragedies!
Most of my books are lesbian erotica. This is also known as ff erotica or even fff erotica. (I haven’t written ffff erotica yet as I can’t keep track of all the hands, let alone all the fingers). Despite this ffocus, I don’t mind gently poking (if you’ll forgive the phrase) a little fun at the male species, especially the burning intensity of a young man whose hormones are governing him more strictly than a Mongolian dictator.
In one story I’m working on, Claudia Nevas, a rather vain and somewhat surgicially-enhanced Colombian housewife, seduces Natasha, her pretty Polish trainer, by the pool – not least by recalling how she, Mrs Nevas, was given a sensuous and nervous massage by the young man who cleans her pool:
“His touch was electric for me, to be honest,” Claudia confided. “I mean my husband had been away for four weeks and even before that he’d been very tired. I was enjoying this lad’s hands so much! After a bit, he said he could do my front as well. It was sweet. He was so nervous that his voice kind of cracked when he made the suggestion. I wanted to see him squirm a little, so I looked over at him a little sternly and then, summoning a little faux-indignation into my voice, I said, ‘You mean you want to touch my breasts!? Young man! Really! Oh my, you should have seen the color he turned!”
Natasha started to giggle.
“He was like a little beetroot, and his cock was still pressing hard against his trunks like an angry snake in a bag.”
Natasha burst out laughing. “You’re too funny, Mrs Nevas. I like that!”
“Yeah, I felt like he was a lit firework – you know, don’t approach or it might go off in your face!”
Natasha appreciates the graphic way that Mrs Nevas is talking and that’s part of the seduction. Of course, people get very moralistic about sex, so that can be funny too. As someone once said, “A nymphomaniac is someone who has more sex than you do.”
In my story Very Personal Training (which is an audiobook and an ebook), Gina Feder, 36, a rather exhausted mother of two, is tempted by a personal ad promising two pretty trainers who will come to her home. The humor comes from the combination of Boruska and Aneka. Buruska is a tall, dark, muscular young woman, a former international volleyball player who is soon anchoring Mrs Feder to the floor with her strong hips and who says almost nothing even under the most extreme circumstances. Aneka is a smaller blonde woman, extremely pretty, with a strong Czech accent, a voice full of sunshine and optimism, and an endearing pseudo-scientific enthusiasm for the art of massage. Let me give you a taste (so to speak – sorry, but one you start joking about sex, it’s hard to stop!):
Suddenly, Gina felt Aneka’s hands on the inside of both thighs.
Instinctively, she tried to push her torso up, saying “Er, I’m not sure.”
But Boruska was like granite. Gina might as well have been trying to lift the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Are you sure this is part of the stretch?” Gina said in a weak voice.
“Absolutely, my dear,” said Aneka softly.
Gina found herself liking the words ‘my dear’.
“The nerve endings below your skin will actually be sending little messages to your brain now, telling it to relax, and that’s what will help the stretching,” Aneka said.
Gina thought this sounded at least a little bit plausible, but she wasn’t sure.
“Er, I’m actually not feeling that relaxed,” said the older woman as she felt two soft hands stroking ever so lightly and ever so slightly higher up the inside of her thighs.
“You have to go with it, Gina,” said Aneka, with just a little authority. “If you are always fighting it, the exercise will not work well.”
“I see,” said Gina, her nervousness all too evident in her voice.
“If you can breathe really deeply,” said the blonde Czech girl, “I’m sure it will help a lot.”
“To be honest,” Gina replied. “Breathing is not that easy with your friend sitting on my chest.”
I’m not saying you are going to double up with laughter at all my erotic books and audiobooks.
Sadly, we can’t all be Donna.
But even if you laugh a little and cum a lot (or even if you laugh a lot and cum a little), I’ll be happy.
Particularly in the spoken versions of my work, the very talented and sultry narrators do regularly bring out the funny side.
So what is my point? I think I got a little distracted by Boruska, to be honest, so let’s hope I can pull myself together and come to a sensible conclusion. 🙂
The basic point is that sex is inherently funny. In the end, nobody punctured its pomposity better than Woody Allen. “Sex between a man and a woman can be a beautiful thing,” he wisely observed, “provided you get between the right man and the right woman.”
And before I go, just one final word of warning from Woody: “Remember, if you smoke after sex, you’re doing it too fast.”
Here are some links to Paris Rivera’s books and audiobooks.
Audible.com: http://adbl.co/1N9BQe3 (audiobooks)
amazon.com: http://amzn.to/1glgEpS (ebooks)
amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/1IxW911 (ebooks)
itunes: http://apple.co/1Wjyyuk (ebooks)