by Jean Roberta

“You’re a writer. You’ll write about this some day. The more experience you get, the more you have to write about.”

This is the consoling remark I get from someone close to me every time I fall into a hole in the road. One of the worst aspects of disappointment, of course, is that it is always at least partly one’s own fault. I won’t accept the diagnosis that I was completely responsible for the trainwreck of my first marriage (there were two people in that relationship), but in hindsight, I could see numerous warning signs that I ignored at the time because I didn’t want to see them.

At the time this post appears on the Erotic Readers and Writers blog, I am supposed to be in New Orleans, attending the annual Saints and Sinners literary conference for gay/lesbian/bi/trans/queer/questioning/not-entirely-straight writers. The last time I went to S&S was in 2007, shortly after Hurricane Katrina. In 2013, I intended to bring my female spouse along to show her the sights, and to stay in the same picturesque inn in the French Quarter where I stayed last time, which has been renovated since then. (I was afraid of that. In 2007, I assumed the hole in the bathroom wall was part of what kept the price low. I didn’t mind, since the plumbing, the TV, and the air conditioning all worked.)

For several weeks, I planned our trip. I made up a budget and printed out the conference program with my name on it to bring to the office of the Dean of Arts in the university where I teach, so I could get pre-approval for reimbursement of my expenses after my return. (I would have to submit receipts.) Spouse got us a good deal on air fare through a site named The Flight Hub.

Then I thought about checking my Canadian passport. It was expired. (At one time, I also had a U.S. passport which I allowed to lapse for reasons I won’t go into here.) I phoned several Canadian and U.S. government agencies, including Homeland Security in the U.S. As though this body had been expecting my call, I was forwarded to a recorded message that said that Canadian citizens with expired passports are not allowed on U.S. soil. Crossing the “undefended border” was never like this before.

I was relieved to find out that I could (theoretically) get an “emergency passport” in less than a day. On the day we were to board a plane, I told Spouse I had to go to the passport office. She tried to explain that we didn’t have time for that since we had a plane to catch. I pointed out that I would have to miss that plane, but she could travel without me. (Her Canadian passport is up to date.) She said no.

At the passport office, I was aghast at how much ID I had to provide besides my expired passport. Since I had a Canadian passport in my hands, I argued, why couldn’t I just get it renewed like a library card? Apparently this is not how bureaucracy works. When the official who was “helping” me learned that I was a naturalized Canadian citizen (born in the U.S.A. – oh the irony), I was told to provide the certificate (a small laminated card) that was given to me when I got my Canadian citizenship in 1974. “Surely you jest,” I said. “I’m not even sure where that is.”

“You have to show it to us,” said the official. Spouse and I rushed home in a car with our suitcases in the back seat. By a miracle, I found that card in the same bureau drawer where I kept my expired passport. We rushed back to the passport office.

Then I was told that I had to provide documentation to support my request for an emergency passport. I would have to reschedule our flights, since the flight I had just missed no longer counted. I rushed home and phoned The Flight Hub. Someone there told me that Spouse and I were “no shows” for our original flight, therefore we would have to start over, and pay for new flights. I explained my situation. I was told to phone the airline (United), which I did. A helpful woman there actually found new flights for us, but then she said unfortunately, I would have to call The Flight Hub to get the original price. There I spoke to the evening supervisor, Natasha as I’ll call her (with an accent from somewhere in eastern Europe). Natasha seemed able to work miracles. She said she would arrange for our new flights at no extra charge.

Natasha put me on hold while she contacted United, where she was put on hold. At some point, Natasha was so concerned about me that she asked me if I was hearing music on my end of the phone line. I said yes, I’m hearing old Broadway show tunes from the 1940s. She seemed glad, and asked me to be patient and not hang up. I hung on.

Natasha sounded delighted when she told me that everything was arranged: Spouse and I had new flights. She sent the information to Spouse’s email. Spouse was out with her son, shopping for a car. With Natasha on the line, I called Spouse on her cell phone to ask for the new password for her email addy. She gave it to me.

I found the email with our flight information, thanked Natasha, printed out the itinerary, then called a taxi to rush me to the passport office. While I waited, I called the taxi office again and was told I would just have to wait. I wondered if I could get to the office faster on foot, but realized that I would then miss the taxi. At length, I got to the passport office just in time to find the door locked. “No!” I said to a woman who was waiting on a chair in the hallway.

“There are people inside,” she said. “Knock on the door and they might let you in.”

I knocked, then knocked again. The door was opened by a grey-haired woman in a uniform who looked like a retired military officer. (These are often employed as civil servants in Canada.) “The office is closed,” she said.

While Officer No-Go kept trying to close the door, I held it open so I could explain my situation. “You’ll have to come back in the morning,” she said. My new flight was to leave at 6:50 a.m., before regular business hours.

Spouse and her son picked me up. Son was exhilarated because he had just signed a lease for his first car. I was distracted.

At home, I phoned every Canadian government phone number that might possibly have a live person on the other end. No luck.

Spouse and I missed our rescheduled flight. Bob (as I’ll call him), the day supervisor from Flight Hub, phoned to ask why we were “no shows” for the second time. (Note that this was the same guy who originally told me I would have to start over and pay for new flights.) I explained. This time, Bob sounded sympathetic. I told him I was giving up. I didn’t want to repeat the process of the day before.

In that case, said Bob, Spouse and I could get reimbursement from our travel insurance. I told him I had spoken to them already, and we were not covered for this type of emergency (expired passport). Bob assured me that I only had to tell the folks at the Royal Bank of Canada (providers of travel insurance) that I had to cancel our flights for “personal reasons” not involving my “passport story.” I would have to provide documentation. I didn’t see any point in arguing with Bob.

While I was speaking to him, someone from the passport office phoned me to say that I could have my emergency passport in an hour to ninety minutes, but only if I had proof of an upcoming flight.

I said I no longer had an emergency. I had missed the conference, and I would wait the usual two weeks for a passport.

I sent email messages to everyone who needed to know that I would not be attending Saints and Sinners this year.

So now you know why I am not posting this from New Orleans. Today I co-signed for Stepson’s new car while he reminded me several times that I should have renewed my passport weeks ago. (“Smug” could be defined as the attitude of a grown child who has a reason to lecture a parent about responsibility.)

Stepson also reminded me that I could write about all this. All life experience can be considered a blessing for a writer. Be that as it may, next time I need to rush to a government office or an airport, I expect Stepson to give me a ride.
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by Jean Roberta

“Menage,” a French word meaning household, is the current term for sex scenes and erotic romances featuring more than two people. In some cases, this term seems parallel to “bisexual,” since ménage scenes or polyamorous relationships are never strictly heterosexual. Either one (or more) person has sex with one (or more) person of the same gender, loosely speaking, at least some of the time, or the whole group is gay-male or lesbian.

I haven’t tried living in an actual ménage that features multiple, simultaneous sexual relationships. In my reckless youth, I took part in a few sex scenes that involved multiple bodies. Just the logistics of such a scene make it harder to write about than a traditional coupling between a female and a male. (For one thing, as several other writers of queer sex have pointed out, pronouns can get confusing when there is more than one “he” or “she.”)

What intrigues me most about the subject of ménage, however, is the emotional complexity of a group relationship which is meant to be more committed and long-term than a casual hookup. While I have never assumed that an erotic writer has to live the lifestyle that she or he is writing about, approaching the chosen category with respect (whether it is BDSM, fetish, male/male, female/female, transgender, cross-dressing, or polyamorous) seems absolutely necessary to produce a story that doesn’t seem like a dirty joke told by an idiot, signifying nothing. (Apologies to Shakespeare.)

I haven’t written much about actual households that include multiple sexual relationships because, for a long time, I was skeptical about whether such arrangements ever actually work. A female friend told me about a failed threesome involving herself, her husband, and the woman who wanted a sexual relationship with her. The Other Woman would have liked Friend to ditch the husband, but instead, Friend told the Other Woman that she had to have a sexual relationship with him too, and then they would be a happy family with Friend in the centre. The Other Woman apparently said a few things that Friend didn’t choose to repeat, and raised a cloud of dust leaving them both behind. No surprise there.

At about the same time, I went to a women’s dance where I flirted with another lesbian who flirted back. Xena (as I’ll call her) was there without her long-term partner Gabrielle. Xena and I went as far as possible in a parked car before her guilt kicked in when she remembered her girlfriend at home. Xena suggested that we should have a threesome some time.

The next time I saw Gabrielle, she didn’t seem happy to see me. I realized that the loving threesome would only happen after the Apocalypse, and possibly not even then.

A young gay-male friend told me his plan to move to another part of Canada to live with a man he knew and liked. Friend told me that the other man (I’ll call him Joe) showed clear signs of being sexually attracted to him, but he was “in the closet.” This actually meant that Joe was married to a woman, Josephine. When I asked my friend if he thought he could also seduce Josephine so that both spouses would get equal time with their co-tenant, he seemed horrified. Friend made it clear that he was not at all attracted to any woman, let alone Josephine, but he couldn’t understand why she didn’t want him to move in. He assumed she was homophobic. Yoy.

Several months later, I heard that my friend was back in town. His ménage experiment had not worked, and the husband had chosen to stay with his wife. How shocking.

In Canada, government signs and notices must be in both official languages: English and French. A sign in the local post office reads: “Demenagez-vous?” which translates roughly into “Are you moving?” The notice goes on to advise those who plan to move to send out change-of-address cards. It always makes me wonder how many people who have tried to live in a ménage have left quickly, with hard feelings on all sides.

Jealousy is not an emotion that can simply be banished by means of a conscious decision, and it is not necessarily an expression of paranoia. Human beings need to feel liked, valued, admired and trusted, and no one wants to be ignored or left behind by a lover who prefers someone else. The challenge, both for those who want to be in a ménage and for those who want to write about the development of one, is to acknowledge the jealousy and cope with it realistically.

Since I began writing erotica, reviewing the work of other erotic writers, and exchanging information with them, I have read some persuasive stories about real and fictional ménages. Writing Skin by Adriana Kraft(www.amazon.com/Writing-Skin-ebook/dp/B003XRF5HU) tells the story of a ménage involving a bisexual wife, a heterosexual husband and a single, bisexual woman who is chosen by the couple because they like her erotic writing. Alternate chapters describe the development of the relationship of the writer with the wife (at first), then the writer’s growing bond with the husband, with some backstory about how the married couple fell in love with each other. There is some honest talk about feelings and expectations. It all works out because each of the three lovers has good intentions toward the other two and is genuinely turned on by both of them.

A few details in this plot stretched my ability to believe. (All three characters seem almost impossibly glamorous, and the husband is never a sexist jerk.) However, the ménage itself worked for me. I could imagine the three of them hosting a dinner party, and laughing together in the kitchen as they help each other cook and serve each course with a suitable wine.

My recent novella, The Flight of the Black Swan (www.amazon.com/Flight-Black-Swan-Jean-Roberta/dp/159021417X) deals with a “front marriage” in the 1860s, a necessary social illusion to protect both the man-loving husband and the woman-loving wife from the drastic penalties for “alternative” sexuality in the Victorian Age. (Women who were even suspected of losing their virginity outside of marriage were excluded from guest lists. Men found “guilty” of sex with other men were executed.)

When I began writing, I thought of this story as essentially queer, to use a broad term. The narrator is a lesbian, and the man she protects from the gallows by marrying him already has a devoted male lover when he proposes to her. As I got to know them better, however, the characters told me things I needed to know. (If you are a writer, you know how this works.) What begins in the story as a strictly legal arrangement develops into a kind of friendship with benefits. When the husband and the wife each have lovers, these Significant Others need to be reassured that they are important members of the ménage, not to be used and thrown away.

Making this kind of arrangement work requires courage and generosity. It requires thinking outside whatever “box” is offered to the participants as normal and inevitable. Writing a ménage story with a happy ending was an interesting challenge. I recommend it.

by Jean Roberta

Years ago, my sister who has a Ph.D. in English, with a specialty in nineteenth-century fiction by women, claimed that referring to sex in a work of literary fiction is acceptable as long as the work is not intended to arouse lust. I was reminded of our mother’s amused response when I asked her (at age four, or thereabouts) why people in stories never go to the bathroom. Mom (who earned a Master’s degree in English during the Second World War) explained that it wouldn’t be appropriate to describe “private parts” in a story, and that I would understand it all better when I was older.

I am now approaching “normal retirement age” (as it is called in the university where I teach English), and I still don’t get it.

Let me revise that statement. I think I get it, but as I often remind my students, it’s never safe to assume. And even first-year university students should be striving to express themselves clearly and thoroughly in written words. A claim that certain subjects have to remain unmentioned – like Voldemort, the villain in the Harry Potter novels — for reasons that shouldn’t have to be explained just isn’t clear or logical.

By now, my mother has passed away and my sister no longer speaks to me, but the defense of literary standards is still a large part of the business of English departments in universities throughout the world. There seems to be a widespread assumption among the conservatives who hate “porn” that 1) all educated people can recognize this stuff when they see it, that 2) educational standards are declining in the public school system (at least in Canada and the U.S.), that 3) there is a widening gap between the literati and the masses who are kept ignorant so they can be exploited by a corporate-government alliance, and 4) allowing “porn” (sexually-explicit writing) into the Ivory Tower would be the ultimate surrender to the muggles, an admission that literate culture is dead or dying.

At the same time, advocates of sexual freedom and sexually-explicit reading-matter (fiction and instruction manuals) have been invited to speak in reputable universities that pride themselves on being avant-garde. Some post-secondary schools that have creative writing programs offer workshops and courses in erotic writing that are taught by erotic writers who have probably been disowned by their blood relatives.

As a university instructor whose job is to force a captive audience of young adults to write analytical essays, I can cautiously agree with points 2 and 3, outlined above. Every semester, my notorious grammar quiz gets more complaints and a lower class average. Is this because modern society is as decadent as Sodom and Gomorrah (offensive to God Himself), or maybe ancient Rome, and teenagers are now reading about body parts instead of learning the parts of speech? And are these activities mutually exclusive?

The lack of communication between porn-hating conservatives and radical advocates of literature that dares to tell the truth about Voldemort subjects is truly amazing. I’ve seen conservatives and radicals rub shoulders in the halls of the university, greet each other with big smiles, and agree in department meetings that we all really have the same goals.

I don’t think so.

By now, I suspect that all my colleagues in the English Department know what I write, but I never feel a draft of cold air coming from any of them. They have known me for years. I’m a silver-haired grandmother who teaches grammar. I don’t wear stilettos or fishnet stockings to academic social events. When one of my colleagues jokingly (rhetorically) asked in a meeting if writing “porn” could be considered an academic accomplishment (expected of academics who must “publish or perish”), he didn’t seem to be aiming a dig at me. Apparently what I write is thought of as something completely different.

It seems that no one wants to admit that “academic standards” are a bucket that can hold oil and water, elements that don’t mix well.

Five years ago (November 2007), a serious journal, The New Criterion, published an article* on “the grotesque carnival of today’s academy” by Heather MacDonald, who claimed that university education (particularly in the U.S.) has gone further downhill since 1987, when author Alan Bloom thundered about low standards in The Closing of the American Mind.

As evidence that educational standards have descended into hell in the 21st century, MacDonald refers to a book she picked up in the library of the University of California at Irvine: Glamour Girls: Femme/Femme Erotica, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and published by the Haworth Press (now defunct). MacDonald claims that this anthology is “undoubtedly not what California’s taxpayers have in mind when they foot the bill for new university books.” (Did she run a public opinion poll?)

After referring to a story in the anthology which was “as much as I could take,” Macdonald explains: “The jacket blurbs from various erotica writers assert that the collection makes an important contribution to lesbian literature by presenting ‘femme/femme’ (feminine lesbians) couplings instead of the usual ‘butch/femme’ stereotype.” This type of breakthrough is clearly not what MacDonald hoped to find in any book housed in a university library.

Egad. I was one of the erotic writers who wrote a blurb for Glamour Girls, and I still regard it as a literary anthology. I was glad to read a collection of stories that combine hot sex with a feminist challenge to the kind of masculine/butch chauvinism that still seems entrenched in some lesbian communities, not to mention mainstream culture. I can’t imagine a good reason why this book should be thrown from a library window onto a bonfire on behalf of taxpayers anywhere.

Luckily, I haven’t heard of any book-burnings inspired by this article or by any other rant about the spread of “porn” into places where it doesn’t belong. Yet some academics casually refer to sexually-explicit writing as something that no one with talent or intelligence would write, or study, even as they claim to promote the pleasure of reading.

Like other academics, I am very concerned about government cutbacks to universities, especially the one where I teach. It concerns me that young adults graduate from high schools without knowing how to put the feelings and ideas that want to burst out of them into written words. It especially concerns me that too many students say “I’ve never been good at writing,” without adding that they were never taught how to structure a sentence.

Ignorance is such a bad thing that it might just be the root of all evil. So how is it related to sex, or descriptions of sex? I can think of several factors that contribute to low literacy rates, and sexual energy is not one of them.

I hope the English department where I hang out never becomes the site of an ideological war like the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s. If war breaks out, however, I don’t intend to claim there is no important difference between the radicals and the conservatives, or that I don’t believe in “taking sides.”

Sigh. I just hope to have lots of good company on this side of the barricades.

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*”Another View: America’s Flaw or Bloom’s?” by Heather Macdonald, in The New Criterion (November 2007, Volume 26), page 24.

by Jean Roberta
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please excuse me if I seem a little distracted. (For one thing, I’m posting this a day late. I hope I’m not intruding.) I’ve spent much of the last few weeks in the 1860s.

Historical fiction fascinates me, especially when it includes more explicit sex than the “serious” literary works of the time generally did. At about the same time I joined the Erotic Readers Association (as it was called) in 1998, I read The Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski. The table of contents (and authors) was like a who’s-who of noteworthy erotic writers of the time, and several of the characters were famous people from the past. Most of the stories seemed to answer questions about history and the game-changers in it that most readers had been afraid to ask (e.g. What did Personage X really do in bed? How Freudian was Freud?).

Like several recent Hollywood movies, historical erotica shows the past more clearly and apparently more accurately than it could have been shown at the time.

Among movies that show a kind of photoshopped version of the past is Goya in Bordeaux, a 1999 biopic about the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828) which uses the same colour palette and chiaroscuro (dramatic contrast between light and shade) that Goya used in his paintings, suggesting that Goya might have made a film like this if the technology had existed in his time. There is also Schindler’s List, a heartbreaking 1993 movie about the Holocaust which was shot in black-and-white to give it the flavour of the 1940s. Although actual films from that era still exist, they don’t look nearly as good.

There seems to be a bottomless appetite for books, films, plays, musicals and even roleplay set in an interesting era in the past which is shown with attractive clarity, and often with some degree of historical accuracy, but without certain disappointing restrictions. (For example, the four-course “medieval feast” which was put on by the local Society for Creative Anachronism several years ago was delicious because all the food was fresh. How likely is it that even royalty in the centuries between 600 and 1600 ate that well?)

Quite a few works of historical fiction with explicit sex scenes have appeared since Maxim Jakubowski’s “mammoth” tome (part of a series of “mammoth” erotic anthologies). British author “James Lear” has written a series of “Mitch Mitchell mysteries” about a crime-solving American medical doctor living in Edinburgh in the 1920s. While investigating murders on the side, as it were, “Mitch” has an amazing number of sexual encounters with other men, even though male-on-male sex was strictly illegal in Britain at the time. These books, published by U.S.-based Cleis Press, have acquired a cult following. Several of these novels seem to be based on older books that are thought of as “classics” (Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson). The allusions to the “classics” are part of the author’s game (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

In 2011, Cleis Press published Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts by Mitzi Szereto, a good-natured romp through Jane Austen’s most popular romance novel. The frequent and varied sex scenes in Szereto’s version actually seem to suit the characters and the plot, and the sex exaggerates the social satire which is present in the original novel. Mitzi Szereto’s version was not the first rewriting of Pride and Prejudice since 2000.

Therefore I was not surprised to read that British publisher Total E-Bound has launched an erotic imprint, “Clandestine Classics.” Here is the publisher’s description:

“There is no doubting the fact that the classics remain an inspiration to writers, even today, with many complex and thought-provoking storylines. But if we are honest with ourselves haven’t we heard the same reserved tale told time and time again?

Our collection of Clandestine Classics is about to change that. This is a collection of classics as they have never been seen before.

The old fashioned pleasantries and timidity have all been stripped away, quite literally. You didn’t really think that these much loved characters only held hands and pecked cheeks did you? Come with us, as we embark on a breathtaking experience—behind the closed bedroom doors of our favourite, most-beloved British characters. Learn what Sherlock really thought of Watson, what Mr Darcy really wanted to do to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and unveil the sexy escapades of Mr Rochester and Jane Eyre. We’ll show you the scenes that you always wanted to see but were never allowed. Come on, you know you can’t resist…open the pages and delve inside.”

Of course, this imprint is controversial. Some readers are uncomfortable with fanfic (the rewriting of someone else’s work) even when it does not include vivid descriptions of sex or desire. However, I think there is some truth in the line “the scenes that you always wanted to see but were never allowed.” Explicitly sexual novels were written in English in past centuries (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as “Fanny Hill,” was first published in 1749), but these publications were so plagued by legal and social persecution that writers (especially “lady writers”) who wanted to avoid trouble generally avoided describing physical expressions of lust. I think it’s fair to speculate on what certain dead writers would have written if they could have been assured that they would get away with it.

Personally, I would feel uncomfortable writing a sexually-explicit version of an actual novel which is still popular in its original form, but so far, I’ve enjoyed reading such books.

So why have I spent several weeks in the 1860s? Because I’ve had two months away from my classroom job, and therefore I’ve been able to finish writing my raunchy pirate novella, The Flight of the Black Swan, in which a rag-tag crew of gay-male exiles from Her Majesty’s Navy (plus one lesbian and one transman) cross the Atlantic in a stolen sailing ship to intercept a blockade-runner carrying precious tobacco and bales of cotton during the American Civil War. Emily, the heroine, feels at first like a mermaid on the ship, a member of an alien species, but as things turn out, she finds the perfect woman to share her life with—along with the lives of her husband and his lover.

Even though I was inspired by the comic tone of Gilbert & Sullivan’s unbelievable Victorian operettas about sailors and pirates, I’ve tried to keep historical inaccuracies down to a minimum. Google is definitely my friend, and I’ve actually learned more than I needed to about the technology of the 1860s.

Would a journalist of the time have ink-stained fingers? Yes. Commercially-available typewriters were not available until E. Remington & Sons sold the first model in 1873. Could news of the Union victory in 1865 be sent to England by Morse telegraph? Yes, but not right away. The first transatlantic message went through in July 1866. Would the British Navy really be willing to retire a wooden sailing ship in the 1860s? Definitely. The ironclad HMS Warrior of 1861 marked the end of the Age of Sail. Luckily, sex itself (as distinct from culturally-specific words) is fairly timeless, and that includes the same-gender varieties.

My novella is currently in the hands of the publisher. Time will tell whether readers will find its version of realism to be magical enough.
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by Jean Roberta

Like most free-lance writers, I hold down a day job that enables me to pay for food and lodging. Sometimes my multiple roles as an English instructor, a writer, a reviewer and a blogger make me feel insane, but at other times, I think they enable me to relate to students, other writers and editors with a certain perspective. If you are a writer who wonders whether editors eat nothing but raw meat, or you are an editor who wonders whether most writers avoided school while being raised by wolves, I recommend sitting on the other side of the desk.

In the 1980s, my Purgatorial Decade, I was struggling to survive as a divorced mother while endlessly revising a thesis for a Master’s degree in English from a Canadian university. The reason for the endless revising was that each chapter had to be approved first by my faculty advisor, then by other members of a committee whose job it was to give me additional advice. This usually involved telling me to add more footnotes to a book that eventually grew to 200 pages, with a 12-page bibliography.

To distract myself from the pain of this process, I sent a collection of lesbian stories (with no explicit sex in them) to a one-woman publisher who agreed to publish them as a book – but of course, she wanted me to make revisions first. At that time, I thought that too many people had too many opinions about how I should express myself on paper.

In the 1990s, I was hired to teach mandatory first-year English courses at my Alma Mater. In 1998, I joined the Erotic Readers Association, as it was called then, and began posting my stories in Storytime and critiquing the stories and poems of other members. Thanks to ERA, I got my first erotic stories published. Since then, approximately 90 (I haven’t counted lately) of my erotic stories have been published in print, and even more of my reviews have been published and posted in various places.

I’ve learned that every piece of writing could benefit from editorial advice. I’ve also learned that editors, like writers, have their quirks. A certain magazine editor who has a PhD in English seems to like contractions better than I do, and he often edits my reviews accordingly. (“The author has lived in New York, London and Timbuktu” becomes “The author’s lived in New York,” etc.) Several years ago, when Dr. Editor was editing my review of a book on representations of African-American history in film, he changed one of my sentences to read: “The Black Panthers entered the California state legislature with guns blazing.” I had to explain to him that in this famous example of real-life 1960s guerrilla theatre, the Black Panthers didn’t actually massacre the whole government of California. They simply entered the capital building as observers, dressed in black berets and leather jackets and carrying legally-registered, unconcealed weapons, all of which was legal behaviour under state and federal law.

In some cases, I have had to explain the difference between “lie” and “lay” (two different verbs) to the editors of erotic journals and anthologies. I have also learned that grammatical correctness is not the same thing as an effective writing style, and that editors can often spot a clunky or unclear sentence that I overlooked in one of my stories. Since most erotic story-writers are usually racing against deadlines, we don’t usually have time to let a finished story sit for awhile, then reread it with fresh eyes and revise it before sending it in.

As a Canadian writer, I have had to explain both to British and American editors that I can, in fact, change “color” to “colour” or vice versa, and that if a story of mine seems to have misspellings and “incorrect” punctuation, that’s usually because I originally wrote it to send to a U.S. market and forgot to change the style before sending it to a British editor. In one case, I was paid for an erotic story in a magazine by means of U.S. bills tucked between the pages of the magazine which was snail-mailed to me on the Canadian prairies from England. I never knew whether the editor believed that Canada uses the same currency as the U.S. (It doesn’t. Like British pounds, our paper money features a portrait of the Queen, but with distinctive Canadian images of Prime Ministers, maple leaves, beavers and canoes.)

As an English instructor as well as a reviewer, I have read many a sentence that is much more hilarious than the writer seems to have intended. Several years ago, I collected a page of these gems and circulated them among my colleagues in the English Department. Some examples: “The main character in this story holds a bottle of beer between his legs, where the symbolism is located.” “An allusion is something that is not real but seen to be very important.” “Passive writing is a bad idea because the past is gone.”

As a reviewer, I have read sentences in published erotica that have almost caused me to spew coffee over a keyboard. One of my pet peeves is the description of impossible activities: “Their eyes locked from across the room, their lips meeting in a passionate kiss as they tore each other’s clothes from their panting bodies.” In erotica, as in directing a play, blocking (arranging the positions of the actors in relation to each other and the audience) is crucial. If one character seems to have three arms, the reader will be unable to suspend his/her disbelief long enough to get into the scene. And while the Christian Inquisition believed that “witches” could have more than two teats, descriptions of such features should probably be reserved for speculative fiction.

This year, I was honoured to be invited to co-edit an anthology of more-or-less scholarly writing. This is the printed version of a lecture/performance series called the Queer Initiative which was started five years ago at the university where I teach. All the presentations on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/non-heteronormative material have been given by faculty members or guest speakers from elsewhere; the presenters have usually read from notes. My job is to copyedit the written versions, which were all sent to me as attachments to emails.

Carefully reading this material with a virtual red pen in hand has reminded me that academics are thinkers but not necessarily writers. I commented to my co-editor, who teaches Theatre, that a certain colleague of ours in Visual Arts sees connections that most other people probably miss (motifs in the visual imagery in several recent Hollywood films), but his insights are expressed in monster sentences. Co-editor grinned from ear to ear and added that our colleague also tends to speak in monster sentences.

I’ve been somewhat surprised by: 1) how satisfying it is to edit the work of other writers to make it look better, and 2) how receptive my colleagues have been to my editorial advice. In several cases, they have expressed relief that I’ve treated their subject-matter with respect even when making numerous changes to individual words, sentence structure and punctuation. Several of the writers have even admitted that the rules (or guidelines) of grammar are generally a mystery to them, and they are glad I seem to have a handle on this stuff.

Such fruitful negotiations make me wonder if world peace might be possible after all.
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Jean Roberta is a long-time member of ERWA who once agreed to post something here every three months, beginning on February 26. At that time, unfortunately, she had just returned from a trip and was in the midst of chaotic home renovations, so this is Jean’s first post on the ERWA blog. Her monthly opinions column, Sex Is All Metaphors, ran on the ERWA website in 2008-2010. These 25 essays are now an e-book with the same title from Coming Together (www.eroticanthology.com) Jean’s reviews of erotic material appear monthly on “Erotica Revealed” (www.eroticarevealed.com), and she is also one of the six writers who blog on “Oh Get a Grip” (www.ohgetagrip.blogspot.com).