Sexy to Me

I am the member of a creative group, the Figments. We were together discussing my latest book, The Wayward School for Girls. It was written to be erotica. My friends laughed, telling me that it was not erotica. Its sexual themes were not the story. They were not explicit or gratuitous.

A friend explained that I was asexual. He did not mean that I can reproduce without a mate, of course. He was not saying that I was uninterested in sexuality. His claim was that I am uninterested in copulating… and he was right.

I did not understand myself until someone else explained me to me. I realized I am totally disinterested in plugging myself into other people. I am disgusted by the idea… though I am aroused by fantasies of monsters raping women. The monsters are not me, however. They are not my representatives. I am the unseen observer who delights in watching the worlds I create play out.

I have played tabletop role-playing games. They greatly inspired my writing of fiction. I never played a character based on an idealized version of myself. On the contrary: I chose to play characters very distinct from me. One of them, one of my best, was a coward. He was a loveable coward, however. I loved him and the other players loved him.

My fiction is not wishful thinking. My favorite thing is the easy killing of normal people… yet I do not enjoy the actual killing of real people, whether they deserve it or not. The victims in my work are the armed and uniformed foot soldiers of villainy. They are typically conscripts, however, not hirelings or followers. The villainy is not their own… and that aspect makes what happens to them especially gratifying.

Most of what is erotic to me is nothing of the sort to other people. The sexiest thing to me, ever, is three panels in a comic book. A big and hairy monster grabs a clueless sentry in full armor by the shoulder and over the top of his helm. The monster swings the masked face past the shoulder, snapping the man’s neck with pathetic ease. The sentry is left sprawled at his post, forgotten by the monster who killed him.

My imagination is sexual, but I think in ways unfamiliar to most everyone else. This is probably why my “erotica” is erotic to me but not as the genre.