This episode is EXPLICIT.
Children, DO NOT read or listen.
In fact, you shouldn’t be on this site at all.
Good bye.
Some kinks cannot be satisfied with a simple, honest erotica story. That is something I absorbed from my recent research into the world of eroticas.
This episode is a bit different from the others. Number one, because itâs about how I could not find what I was looking for, most references are, really, references as in⊠research references. They arenât what this episode is about. They didnât exactly inspire this episode. But they helped me see how I will probably never write âeroticaâ eroticas, official eroticas. And I will elaborate on this point more in the main part of the episode.
And it is also a bit different from the other episodes in that, number two, it is marked explicit. So, children, go away. I mean, I donât think anyone under 18 has ever listened to this podcast, at least according to the Spotify statistics I get from Anchor, but hey, you never know. Maybe children have been listening to this podcast through the Apple podcast app or Google podcast app or a browser.
But children, you cannot listen to this particular episode because it is now marked explicit. Why? Well, I personally have nothing against children learning about the completely natural and even desirable existence of sex and some of the more, how should I put this, approachable kinks. But you know what I am terrified of? Parents. Children, I am terrified of your parents and parents in general. So, do not, I repeat, do not listen to this episode. Okay? Go hunt candies tonight. Itâs Halloween. Come back to this when you turn eighteen, or whatever is the legal age for accessing all kinds of porn in your place of residence.
That said, this episode isnât porn, it isnât erotica, and it isnât even erotic, I think. This is a study on how some kinks cannot be satisfied with a simple, honest erotica story. Actually, itâs my study on my particular kink. Yes, apparently I do have a kink. For the longest time, I wondered about peopleâs very specific, very strong kinks and why I didnât have them, or why it seemed like I didnât have them. But I think I now know why.
So, with all this out of the way, let us begin.
My interest in the erotica genre is nothing new. I have always thought that at some point, I would write eroticas, for three main reasons.
One. All kinds of writers that I know of have all done it. Writing smut sells. And yeah, artists, including writers, need money. And not just any kind of moneyâbecause, if any kind of money had satisfied our needs, I wouldâve just kept my corporate job and I think all these writers wouldâve gotten better-paying jobs as well. But I didnât do it, and they didnât do it. Why? Because making money from writing is key, I think. Selling writing gives me a degree of pleasure that no other high-paying job could possibly give me. If all these writers are anything like me, it makes complete sense why they wrote smut instead of getting another part-time job. It is a great feeling when someone buys what you wrote. It doesnât matter what the writing is about.
The second reason Iâve always thought that one day, I would write eroticas was that they looked really difficult to write. I vaguely thought this way, without truly knowing why it feels so very difficult for me. I only learned the true reason while I was doing research very recently, but I still vaguely thought, âOooh. So many different kinks. What if I pick a kink and someone who is really into that kink tells me âYouâre getting it all wrong!ââ You know? Like, what if someone tells me Iâve been having sex the wrong way, or something? Even though, most likely, what I write in a story wonât be 100% me in that I am not the character, what if someone says that itâs not genuine?
You see, if some silly person picks on a non-erotica story, say, if they say that this one street in Chicago in this story doesnât have three crosswalks but instead two, then Iâd just completely ignore that person. If Iâm really angry, I might even tell them to go fuck themselves and get a life. But for some reason, with erotica, if someone were to tell me that thatâs not how they feel any sort of arousal, Iâd be like⊠âIâm terribly sorry. I am so profoundly sorry for having turned you off.â Itâs just⊠itâs a lot of pressure. Gods, making people hard or wet or whatever is a lot of pressure. You think writing engaging, sexy stories is any easier or simpler than writing a five-hundred-page historical novel? Think again. Arousing people, especially without knowing who youâre arousing, is incredibly difficult. I donât know the reader. How am I supposed to⊠how does that even work? And so this is why Iâve always seen erotica as this⊠this big mountain that I must attempt to climb one day, and ideally, conquer, almost.
And the third reason Iâve always thought that I would write eroticas is that I could see sex playing a crucial role in my SF stories. As I recently wrote on my blog, there are many many relevant questions:
ââŠare we going to have sex with robots? If someone transfers their mind into a robot body, will the marriage contract with their spouse be still valid, or will the transfer be considered as their death and rebirth?
What happens to reproduction? Does cloning count as reproduction?
If we donât have set bodies, what would be defined as sex? A series of artificially generated stimuli? Or what else?â
Lots to think about. I genuinely think that humans are incapable of existing apart from sex. At the most physical level, we wouldnât be here if our parents hadnât had sex.
At a similarly physical level, we do not exist outside of the body. We canât. And thus when someone touches us, whispers to us, looks at us, or when someone smells attractively, or goodness, if we can taste someone, there is no way we will not react in some fashion, albeit in tiny ways, hopefully. Hopefully weâre used to civilization by now so we donât immediately react to people who turn us on and use that as an excuse to commit all sorts of crimes. But Iâm saying, sex or interest in sex is something that we as a species struggle to tame to one degree or another. This isnât because sex is bad, itâs because sex interrupting the daily flow of life would be incredibly inconvenient.
And then there is also the theoretical level, about why I think humans cannot exist apart from sex. This theoretical level is what is very closely related to todayâs theme: Some kinks cannot be satisfied with a simple, honest erotica story.
But before we get to that part, we have to talk about life drawing classes first.
Once upon a time, I thought I would maybe go to art school. And by art school, in this case, I mean visual art. I think in the English language, mostly when people say âartist,â itâs for visual art. According to Google, which pulled its definitions from Oxford Languages in this case, an artist is âa person who produces paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby.â After that come all the related definitions, the broader definitions, such as âa person who practices any of the various creative arts, such as a sculptor, novelist, poet, or filmmaker.â
Way back when, I thought I would be an artist that belongs to the first, narrower category: a visual artist. In hindsight, that thought is hilarious, because I have no talent in the visual arts. By this, I mean that I donât have the one talent that every visual artist needs, which is the desire to make visual art. Yes, I think the most important talent that anyone aspiring to become anything in any field is the desire to keep on doing what they do. I have this in writing. I donât have this in the visual arts.
So of course I never became a visual artist and I probably never will, because I donât practice.
But I still remember the life drawing classes. In life drawing classes, students sit around a naked model, or multiple naked models, and draw them from life. I took these classes when I was in high school. And at the time, I didnât think they were that important. They were just something that we did to prepare portfolios for college admissions and stuff. But in hindsight, I think they influenced my entire worldview. Literally, they influenced how I look at the world.
Because, one of the things that were frequently mentioned during class was this: you, the student, must not draw from your head. You, the student, must draw from your eyes. Draw from what you see, instead of what you think you must be seeing.
This means that when you look at a womanâs breast, you donât associate it with whatever preconception you have about womenâs breasts. It is neither sexy nor unsexy. It is neither small nor big. You donât think about babies, you donât think about what face she makes when her lover touches it. It just is.
Same with a manâs penis. It is not hairy, it is not not hairy. It is not thin, it is not thick. It isnât too dark- or too light-shaded either. It just is. And if the guy has an erection, which models sometimes do, and I think it has nothing to do with sexual arousalâitâs just⊠itâs physiological. If the guy has an erection, then that just is. You donât think about if heâs embarrassed, you donât think about if you are embarrassed. You just draw the penisâalthough, frankly, I think most of us didnât draw the penis, because it is such an incredibly boring thing to draw. I donât know. Maybe if I had drawn more penises, I might have become a better artist, but I didnât. Maybe thatâs why Iâm a writer.
Anyway, one of the things the instructor said to remind us of what we were trying to do was that flesh is just meat. And this might sound weird, until you get the meaning. What she meant wasnât that we should eat it, for godsâ sake, no. What she meant was that just as we can gaze upon a slab of meat and think nothing of itâwhich I think is the case for most of us used to modern supermarketsâjust like that, we should be able to look at the human flesh and just see the human flesh.
Flesh, like all else in this world, consists of mass. Surrounding the mass is the void. Light falls on the flesh. Flesh creates shadow. Draw that.
And all this applies to other kinds of basic drawing as well. Still life, for example. At the very basic level, the artist should be able to only see the shape and form of a flower, a vase, an apple. You look at a pencil and you see the pencil in a completely neutral way.
But see, as soon as you call a pencil a pencil, a ton of history is bound to be attached. The #2 pencil that you took your SATs with. The pencil that your elementary school crush picked up for you. The pencil you stole from the pocket of your nemesis. Some such thing. All kinds of stories.
And yet, with inanimate objects, it is easy to fool yourself that you are seeing only the object, because, well, it is lifeless.
Whereas, life drawing. The person, alive, is standing in front of you, posing. What do you do? Can you look at the person as flesh? Can you avoid attaching all kinds of racial, sexual, cultural, economic, and other stereotypes to this person and just fucking draw this person?
That is what we trained for.
Of course, after all this, what an artist does, ideally, is to imbue their art with their unique perspective. But before perspective even comes in intentionally, what is necessary is to remove all the perspectives that you arenât aware of. Otherwise, whatever perspective you attempt to imbue your art with will be uncontrollably tainted with the mess you bring in from your life. And yeah yeah, art cannot be and perhaps should not be controlled 100%, but I think there is a clear difference between total lack of control and some amount of finesse. A huge difference.
Maybe control isnât the right word. Itâs about awareness. Letting uncontrollable elements pass through you while being aware, versus having absolutely no clue whatsoever what is happening to you or your artâthatâs a huge difference.
Anyway, yeah. Life drawing classes. I took them, and I learned how to see meat as meat. Now, this isnât to say that I was able to put that onto paper. Oh, my hand-eye coordination is so poor and I never trained myself to get over that physical hurdle. But I think I understood what needed to be done, in my head. I understood it enough to know that my hands werenât doing it. I understood it enough to know that I would never be a visual artist, but that I could apply this concept of âtotal neutrality first, perspective laterâ to other areas of art, such as writing.
Itâs like this. When a sentence says âA man walks down the road,â I know that the word man means absolutely nothing beyond something really rudimentary, like⊠some guy with a penis. But is he an old man? Young man? Man with crouched posture? Man in a suit? A rich guy? Poor guy? What kind of man is he?
And the word âroadâ means absolutely nothing either, because depending on which area you live in, the size will be different, the smoothness of the surface will be different, and the amount of traffic will be different.
Even the word âwalkâ means absolutely nothing, because people walk in different ways. How fast does he walk? How confidently? How purposefully? Does he limp? Are his shoes comfortable? If not, why is he wearing them?
Every single thing in a story needs context or it must be unimportant enough to not require context. Everything that matters had better have something coming before or after with crystal-clear clarity.
Now, do I do this every time with perfect control, when Iâm writing? Of course not. But Iâm saying, I know that itâs necessary. I know that nothing means the same thing to anybody. And because training for total neutrality is incredibly boring unless you are one of the crazy people who are dedicated enough to their craft to actually want to push through this, what do I need? A character for the reader. That character will imbue everything with meaning, because they will filter reality with their five senses and opinions. But not me. I mean, I wrote the thing, and some characters are more autobiographical than others, but I will not uncontrollably mix things up from my life into the story, at least as much as I am aware of it.
And so, I approached the erotica genre with the same humble mindset of a newbie artist. I wanted to take a neutral look at it, as much as possible. For this purpose, I looked for an overview book, and I found “The Complete Guide to Writing Erotica: Launch Your Erotica-Writing Gig to Success: The Writing Business” by Sophie Chandler.
This, by the way, is a great book. As Iâve said at the beginning of this episode, itâs not likely that I will write anything labeled officially âeroticaâ in the future, but what Ms. Chandler says about the business of erotica writing aligns with what I have been hearing from various other indie writers and publishers. And erotica, more so than other genres of writing, is predominantly indie, at least is my impression. Ms. Chandlerâs advice seems solid for anyone aspiring to write eroticas. Even if you write in other genres, you might want to check out this book, because itâs concise and has a lot of information that other writer-publishers will find helpful as well.
Anyway. At the very end of this book, there is a list of niches. Niches? Niches. And this was where I was just amazed. So amazed. I will read you the entirety of the list. If you donât know what some words mean, well, that is proof of just how diverse the world of kinks is. In alphabetical order:
âABDL, Alien, Alpha males, Amputee, Babysitter, BBW, BDSM, Bestiality, Big dicks, Bikers, Billionaires, Bimbos, Breeding, CBT, Cowboys, Crossdressing, Cuckold, Cum play, Doctors/nurses/medical, Edging, Exhibitionism/voyeurism, Expansion, Feet/shoes, Femdom, Furry and/or animal roleplay (which might or might not include suits), Gangbangs/orgies, Gender swap, Gore, Hucow/lactation, Humiliation, Incest/PI, Inflation, Interracial/multicultural, Maids, Mafia, Medical, MĂ©nage, Monsters/mythological beings, Non-con/dub-con, Office/worker, Older man or woman with younger man or woman (cougars, MILF, MayDecember, etc., Omegaverse, Pain, Pregnancy, Prison, Scat, Sex Toys, Shifters, Strippers, Vampires, Virgins/first times, Vore/Cannibalism, Watersports, Weight gain, Werewolves.â
Amazing, isnât it? And this is probably not a complete list either. The world is large, folks, the world is amazingly large, the range of preferences is huge, and there are probably two hundred more kinks.
So, I thought, well, Iâll read some of the books in some of these categories. And I did. I started reading. And I read. And I read. And I was likeâŠ
âŠnot turned on. In fact, I explicitly found that I was one hundred percent turned off. And I was so puzzled. These books had so much sex in them, and I found that just⊠weird.
And Iâm not saying the books were doing something wrong. Iâm saying, clearly something was not working for me.
But I kinda expected that, because most modern erotica books that sell well have some version of manchests on them, and I find them so, oh, such a turn-off. And Iâll explain later, in detail, why I think all of these were such a turn-off for me, because I have a theory now. It has to do with the theme of todayâs episode: Some kinks cannot be satisfied with a simple, honest erotica story.
But while I was reading the books, I didnât have a full theory, I just thought, itâs because of the manchests. And the reason I find manchests unsexy is that, one, they make me think of Manchester United. I donât know why. Itâs a weird association in my head. I apologize, fans of Manchester United, I am just weird that way.
Second, when the manchest on the cover clashes with the one I am visualizing, itâs just⊠I canât make it work.
And itâs not because I hate naked men. Men, I donât hate you when youâre naked. I donât hate real-life manchests either. I am sure each of your specific manchest is exceedingly beautiful. You have every right to cherish your manchest and take care of it. And you can show them off in any way you like in front of your sexual partner and/or partners. I do not care if youâre into orgies.
But I look at manchests on the cover and Iâm like⊠what the hell. What a turn-off.
And so I thought Iâd go the Literature with capital L route. You know, Nabokov and âLolitaâ kind of route. Because for some magical reason, when youâre in Literature with capital L, suddenly smut isnât smut anymore, it counts as art. But at least on those books, usually there is no manchest. There is usually no chest at all. But because I donât like Nabokovâs styleâhe writes too long for my tastesâI did more research and found AnaĂŻs Nin and her book, titled, âHenry and June.â
You know, while I was reading the first parts of the book, I thought I would do a Sponge episode specifically about her book. Itâs because she does write beautifully. Very lively person, literally, she is so full of life and energy that she must satisfy her needs. And because âHenry and Juneâ is based on her diary entries, the degree to which she is understandably self-absorbedâbecause, itâs her diary, duhâthat degree is so powerful. She is entirely unapologetic about her needs and desires, and I think that is mesmerizing in its own way, which might be why so many people, men and women, were attracted to her.
Also, I love her name. AnaĂŻs.
But. As I read on. I became more and more puzzled. Because⊠instead of being turned on more, I was being turned off, actively being turned off.
And I didnât just sit there and read the book for five hours straight or anything. As in, this wasnât from sexual exhaustion in the physiological sense. I tried taking breaks from the book. I think it took me more than two weeks to get through it. Maybe even three weeks. And⊠despite the breaks. Every time I came back to the book, I was sad.
Truly, it was beyond being turned off. I was sad. I felt like crying. And that is such a weird reaction. And, sure, I found Henry Miller, her primary love interest… He was a huge, huge turn-off, so at first I thought maybe it was him. Like, AnaĂŻs finds him hot but I found him to be⊠Iâm sorry, Henry Miller, I mean, he is dead, so itâs not like anything I say can ruin his sex life, but the way he is insecure is different from being vulnerable. Vulnerability and insecurity arenât the same things. This guy seems really insecure. Everything he said to AnaĂŻs actively turned me off. The way he worries about himself is so limited, I sat there reading, âThis is why youâre insecure.â Because he has so many preconceptions about how he should be. I guess he never took life drawing classes. And so heâs like, he should be this way and that way and Iâm like, youâre not. And when AnaĂŻs talks about his big cock, Iâm like, âEhhh, kinda difficult to picture. If I were to life-draw this guy, his cock may indeed be physically gargantuan, but I as an artist, who doesnât feel like adhering to the rule of seeing flesh as flesh in severely insecure cases like these, will probably draw him with a penis the size of a baby acorn.â
That level of turn-off.
But even if heâs a turn-off, there was no reason for me to feel sad about it.
The more sex there was in the book, the sadder I got. Seriously, at first it was fine. The first few pages. Sex, sex, sex, okay. Itâs erotica, you know? Perfectly expected.
But then! Page 50 still sex sex sex sex sex.
Page 10 and still sex sex sex sex sex.
Itâs really difficult to say sex in, multiple times in a row and it felt like that in the book.
And I thought, OH MY GODS!!! Is sex all these people think about? And I found it so unsexy to the highest level. And, I mean, no offense intended for AnaĂŻs Nin. AnaĂŻs Nin is dead and I think she had a very fulfilled life, so I think she wouldnât care that I feel this way. More likely, she will think me tragic, for not getting that thinking about sex is wonderful.
I have a huge respect for erotica writers now, because I donât know how they can produce this many words about sex. I really genuinely believe that some people are more talented than others in some fields. Like I said earlier, the one talent that is a requirement in any field is the desire to keep on doing what youâre doing. And the same applies to erotica. This takes dedication.
But, for me, this book, âHenry & June,â made me want to cry because it was so full of sex. Clearly I have no talent in this area. And I felt this way even though itâs beautifully written. Thatâs why Iâm talking about it at all. AnaĂŻs has a really strong voice, which is what makes the sex interesting until page 50. After that, some people will like it for all the sex, and others, like me, will get⊠start getting dangerously gloomy.
And so I kept thinking about why this is. Why this is.
And I also tried to remember what I, originally, considered Eroticaâwhat I find arousing.
And that is when I remembered Chuck Palahniuk.
Let the records show that as of October 2022, Chuck Palahniuk is the only working writer who can turn on Ithaka O. with his words.
Yes, dear fellow absorbers. I adore Chuck P.âs writing. I actually donât know much about the writer, I just read his writing. The reason I donât try to find out more about him is that, I heard that he got embezzled by his agent or something? The whole traditional publishing world with literary agents still existing just depresses me so greatly, but also, this man is double my age. So itâs not like he had any other options while he was starting out. So he cannot be blamed. I mean, he wasnât the one who committed the crime of embezzlement. So the whole affair is just utterly sad and I donât want to look him up. I just adore his writing. They make me feel alive, beyond a physical way.
And I thought about why. Chuck P.âs stories do feature many sex references and sometimes, overt sex scenes, but I have never seen them being categorized as erotica. What people call it usually is absurd fiction, or horror fiction. Iâm not sure about the horror part, but yes, absurd it is.
And then there is his Wikipedia page where his writing style is described. Quote, âThe content of Palahniuk’s works has been described as nihilistic. Palahniuk has rejected this label, stating that he is a romantic, and that his works are mistakenly seen as nihilistic because they express ideas that others do not believe in.â End quote.
Yeah. I donât know who described his work as nihilistic. I mean, are you kidding? Have you read his books? His stories are the most life-giving stories ever. Yes, I agree with Chuck P. that they are very romantic. They are more romantic than any romance story I have ever read. Obviously this is personal tatse, and thus nobody can refute this. For me his stories are more romantic than stories categorized as romance.
And why?
Why do I feel this way?
Why does his writing arouse me in every sense of the word, when the most explicit erotica cannot?
That was when I understood.
Some kinks cannot be satisfied with a simple, honest erotica story, and that is the kink I have.
When someone uses the tag âbestiality,â I get it, I accept it as a category, but it doesnât mean anything to mean. Same with âVampires.â I get that people find them sexy and I even understand in my head why vampires can be sexy. But to me that tag on its own means absolutely nothing. And manchests. Some people are apparently turned on by the sight of manchests. I am not. I absolutely do not know what to make of manchests floating around in space on their own. There is no context. Itâs like I still see meat as meat.
And yet, remember I said that I think humans cannot exist apart from sex? Itâs actually because I see sex everywhere, given the right context. Not in a constantly physiologically turned-on way, but I mean, fabric. Have you ever touched exquisite satin? If so, surely you know what I mean when I say fine fabric can be the sexiest thing in the world. Or ice cream. When a spoonful of that blissful coldness melts on your hot tongue on a sweltering day, is that not sexy?
Most importantly, I am highly sapiosexual. Itâs a word for when you find intelligence sexually attractive or arousing. I am actually capable of finding Sheldon from Big Bang Theory sexy. I think that explains me more than enough; for those of you who havenât watched Big Bang Theory, watch it. Itâs hilarious and also, you will learn what a severe case of sapiosexuality I have.
Anyway.
Fabric and ice cream are objects that require the imbuing of meaning, because normally, on their own, they arenât sexual. And intelligence, it is that which can imbue things with meaning.
So. Combine all this.
Ithaka thinks humans cannot exist apart from sex. And yet, when AnaĂŻs Nin presented sex and sex only, she started getting sad.
Ithaka cannot handle the proliferation of manchests used as tags on book covers. And yet, she gets a kick out of inanimate objects.
Ithaka can read eroticas of various kinks as study material without being turned on in any shape or form, but she finds Chuck P.âs writing incredibly arousing, even though he doesnât write erotica.
Why is this?
Itâs because she, as in, I, have a kink for meaning. I am 100% certain of this now. And by meaning, I donât mean some ultimate one truth. I believe such a thing does not exist, and when someone tries to convince me that there is one answer to life, I get angry. Itâs a turn-off. And Iâll probably say fuck off.
But when someone puts their unique context and spins everything that I saw as neutral and/or repulsive into something wonderfully lively and intriguing, thatâs when I get turned on.
That is how much context I need. That is why no story labeled as erotica will turn me on. Because the genre convention is to present the sex and then end the story.
And I will probably never write erotica, because I cannot imagine how to do that. I mean, I hear that some writers are capable of doing thatâwriting things they themselves donât feel. I canât. I might remind myself that meat is meat and nothing more, nothing less, for practice. But I am incapable of spending time on things that donât actively interest me. I just⊠I just canât. And I think that, too, has to do with my kink. If every context in my life clashes with that which Iâm trying to do, I wonât do it. So if the conventions of eroticaâwhich must be respected because readers have every right to have genre expectations, especially in genres as clearly defined as the various erotica kinksâif the conventions of erotica demand certain things and I cannot give them to readers, I should not be writing erotica.
It is no wonder that I have always thought, vaguely, that writing eroticas would be difficult. Itâs no wonder that I worried about people telling me that I am interpreting the kinks in the wrong way. Itâs because to me, the kinks werenât the key. I can imagine making various and clashing kinks sexy in some wayâonly, it wouldnât work in an erotica genre, because to make that work for me, way too much context would be needed. This goes beyond foreplay. I need an entire perspective.
I am turned on by people who imbue lifeblood into mundane things. That is my kink. And I think for that, the topic at hand actually cannot be sex. Itâs a weird irony. I can see sex everywhere and therefore to keep talking about sex sex sex sex sex is the most boring way to talk about sex for me.
That kind of sex talk is like American cities. Iâm sorry, American cities, but compared to older cities in other parts of the world, youâre ugly. See, this is why young and new doesnât do shit for true sexiness. American cities are all separate working areas, separate residential areas. Oh, there is so much clarity and boredom. You canât walk around American cities and find new things. Or rather, you have to walk a lot until you get to the next new thing, and so youâre exhausted and not in a state, physical and mental, to be aroused in any shape or form. So because you know this, what happens in American cities is that you get in a car and put in the directions to where you want to go. Meaning, you know exactly where youâre headed. I find that⊠so⊠anti-arousing.
Chuck P., seriously, this guy. When I read him I feel the closest to how I feel all the time, which is, I cannot separate life from death. Somewhere between, or encompassing everything, there is sex. He writes romance, he writes erotica. He writes literature with small and capital Ls. I adore his writing. I am mildly jealous of anyone who sleeps with him, physically.
Heâs like⊠he writes like plants having carnivorous sex. And it wonât make sense until he makes you see sense. But he will.
And I am saying all this because there is so much humor in his stories, so even if he hears this episode, which is highly unlikely, heâll just laugh it off. He wonât be disturbed by someone fangirling over his writing. Iâm not the first one and I wonât be the last one either.
Yeah. I highly recommend that everyone listening to this try reading eroticas. Itâs different from watching porn in that no chest or boob or any other body part will get in the way of your imagination, so long as you can get over the image on the cover. And also, you may find that you arenât into what you think you are. On top of that, you might figure out a thing or two about your life, in general.
I mean, this. Me. The amount of context I need for something that other people are more than capable of putting in a neat, organized category of their lives. This explains so much about me. For example, last episode. Remember how much I talked about scars and how love at first sight actually isnât at first sight?
I think I am incapable of believing in love at first sight. Everything comes with a story. And without the story, the backstory, in a vacuum, in the void, I cannot imagine being aroused in any way, romantically or sexually or intellectually.
So what I will do is, I will write erotica, but not label it as such. Because, even when there is sex, the way the sex is represented will be so tangential that it would never arouse any serious erotica reader. It will only arouse people like me. There. Problem solved. Except, I can kiss goodbye to the idea of writing real erotica and making money from smut. That time-honored tradition of writers will be an impossible experience for me.
Now, one thing I will have to be consciously careful about, going forward, is to not fall for too much context. I shouldnât spend time on things that arenât worthwhile. I believe humans can be made to believe anything, and I should not set a trap for myself. I should not try to make sense of what doesnât make sense.
See, I consider time to be my most valuable asset. This, too, can be explained through all my findings shared on this episode. No wonder I value my time so much. Itâs because when I spend time on something or someone, I already knew (subconsciously) and know now (consciously), that it is the way to attraction, in every sense of that word. Without time, there is no way to satisfy this weird kink of mine. It is the most time-consuming kink ever. With time comes more context and more opportunities for me to imbue meaning.
Whatever or whoever I spend the most time on will be the one I am in love with. So actually it will be very difficult to compete against writing, because I spend so much time on it, voluntarily too. But among humans, the person I spend the most time on is the one I am in love with.
You know whatâs really hot? Having a common mission. Inspiring each other, beyond physical sex. If there is no inspiration, if I have to look for inspiration somewhere else, I wouldnât see the point.
But then because of this tendency in me to think this way, I may end up thinking in a kind of sunk-cost way. And I am bad at diversification of relationships. No really, without overt cheating, many people accomplish diversification in a variety of ways. I cannot do that, so I could get trapped in the meanings I attached myself. I could fall in love with the story and not the thing itselfâwhich is actually difficult to see, especially if the thing isnât a thing but a human who comes with their own story.
Itâs tricky.
Everything is meat, at the beginning. And meat is just meat. It is entirely replaceable with any other meat. Nothing inherently has meaning.
But when I see something as beautiful, oh, there will be a richness and depth to that objectâs story that everyday mundaneness cannot possibly defeat. Maybe this is one way in which the mind can win against corporeality. Thatâs another topic I think about a lot. How corporeality is so strong a force, you need madness to overcome it. But maybe time and its accompanying meaning is one way to win against it.
The body, more and more, is becoming replaceable. Pretty soon, perhaps we will be replaced whole by robot bodies. But time? Well, you could say that by replacing the body, you can buy time too.
But true time? Even with all the time in the world. Even if we now live 80 years instead of 50 years, do those extra 30 years make time any less precious?
I find that difficult to imagine. Time, the one irreplaceable thing. Incredibly sexy. Giving time is the most arousing act we can do for another person.
And so, on this day or night of Halloween, thank you for your time. Thank you for listening.
May you, in your own way, find your kink, fulfill it frequently and effectively, and hopefully, in one way or another, become irreplaceable.
All links
- Ithaka’s Blog
- “The Complete Guide to Writing Erotica: Launch Your Erotica-Writing Gig to Success: The Writing Business” by Sophie Chandler
- âHenry and Juneâ by AnaĂŻs Nin
- Chuck Palahniuk
- Big Bang Theory
Music
- Mood – Aves
- Solitude – Michael Drake
- Shizzle – Curtis Cole
- Foyer (feat. Musaka) – Yestalgia
Image source
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/collection-of-pornographic-art-from-antiquity-1785
Everything I do is organized here:
© 2022 Ithaka O.
