Maybe, I Will Finish "Divorced and Desired": Reflections on Erotica

Ever since starting this newsletter, I have experienced a spark of creative liberation that I last felt back in the summer of 2021, when I was churning out a serialized romance novel for a now defunct erotica app. I got the gig through a friend of a family friend. We were at a shiva and he told me that he was now the CEO of an erotica app and was assembling a team of authors to pump out sexy copy. To which I informed him that I had written a short story called “Cro-Magnon Malibu” for a magazine I ran with my friend in 2018. I am not the first or last person to get a job at a shiva. I hope that one day, at my shiva, everyone gets a content gig. Okay, back to Divorced and Desired, if you aren’t familiar: the short story was about a Malibu divorcee snoozing off on the beach after drinking a few glasses of Pinot Grigio and reading a pulpy novel featuring a sexy neanderthal making sweet love to a Cro-Magnon woman. She dreams, like we all have at some pint, that she’s entered a porno simulation in which the hunky neanderthal’s penetrative thrusts feel authentic and blissful and overwhelming. Nirvana.

For this erotica app, I expanded the story to multiple chapters, elaborating on how the divorcee resented her ex-husband for not letting her fully enjoy a night at a Brentwood swingers party. In episode 3, which unfortunately was the last installment, she reclaims the narrative and has passionate, vengeful sex with a painter applying a thick layer of bright yellow to her patio overlooking the canyons (her ex hated the color yellow and was a complete control freak — it’s all about the details). I wasn’t able to finish the story arc due to some internal stuff happening at this erotica app. However, I was able to keep the IP (Madame Web!) and have always been a little tempted to let the masses know what the hell happened to this Malibu divorcee.

I am not interested in erotica in an ironic way. I genuinely find the pressure of making something sexy compelling. Writing sex can be a trap (I recommend Brontez Purnell’s interview at The New Yorker Radio Hour, he discusses why sentimentality in gay sex writing is somewhat dated and why he prefers to illuminate sex flops).

Writing kitschy erotica has the potential to open a realm into the fantastical: I enjoyed creating that messy yellow paint scene because it’s rare in real life that things are so symbolic and on the nose. Sex can be about relishing in your main character syndrome; why not entrap the whole world into your subjectivity and let it rip?

Spoiler Alert, here’s the story arc for Divorced and Desired: she ascends the ranks of the upscale Malibu swingers scene and after catching feelings with a prospective suitor, she realizes that maybe there’s a limit to this libertine lifestyle — is she finding real pleasure, or just getting high off revenge?

I won’t give away the location (it’s not the Equinox), but the gym I go to in West Hollywood generally has a Men dot com (NSFW) production vibe. A lot of Very Hot Men are pumping weights, sweating, and groaning; some don chain necklaces with locks. Despite all of that, it’s not necessarily a sexy place. Why? I guess the subtext isn’t really subtext. Everyone is performing the cheesy erotica fantasy in shorts-shorts and tight tank tops in a way that’s reminiscent of Halloween. No one is letting it just happen gradually and organically and leaving space for just enough ambiguity to make one’s mind wander to how things will go from point A to B. Maybe, we don’t need more erotica that is beautiful or heartbreaking, but rather erotica that is truly ridiculous and over the top so we can compartmentalize and reflect on our fucked up expectations.

There’s no way that the written word can compete with Pornhub’s buffet of niche sex interests. Porn isn’t even in porn anymore — it usually just cuts straight to the chase; no narrative, all action. It’s about the intimacy of a creator’s bedroom, not the elaborate situation which led them there. In this climate, perhaps, there’s space for erotica that is absurd and holds cinematic textures, allowing readers to face the depravity of what they truly desire — a more amplified, whimsical route from point A to B. Pizza boys! Neanderthals! Tennis coaches! An obscenely rich businesswoman shoving a pile of NDAs off a glass table to seduce her beefy butler!

It’s time to revisit the Divorced and Desired Google Doc and contemplate what to do next. To research the next chapters, I can venture to the Malibu Country Mart and order trays of oysters and bottles of white wine. Don’t worry, I’ll save the receipts—tax write offs get me really horny.