Sex Lives in Fiction
By Judah Pollack • Nov 28th, 2007 • Category: Erotic Philosophy by Judah PollackWhy is it we know so little about the sex lives of our great fictional characters? Artists work hard to give us insight into the lives of others and yet their character’s sexual proclivities are left a mystery. When we do get a glimpse of a sex life it is usually in erotica and then it’s often a well-toned person who wants little more than to be taken and then left spent on a beach in Bahia. But what was their childhood like? What do they fear? Who cares, we’re already wiping down our hand at that point.
I don’t know about you but many of my relationships have had big turning points in the bedroom. Like that time I slipped a thumb in Sheila Kandinsky’s unsuspecting ass. I got mule-kicked to the far wall of the bedroom. She told me it was a matter of trust as she removed her sweaters from the second drawer. I said, “Exactly, you don’t trust me with your ass.” She disagreed.
So I found Jenny Finklestein. We had no trust issues. But I digress.
The point is big things happen to people when they’re in bed together and our fictional canon seems to leave that out.
Take Abraham, the father of three religions. Was he an ass man? Is that why he couldn’t get Sarah pregnant for 90 years? Did god’s still small voice come to him and say, “Abraham, use the front hole”?
Then there’s Noah, alone on an ark with no one but his ancient, over-worked wife and a whole lot of animals.
And what of Anna Karenina, that Russian minx? Can’t you feel how cold her St. Petersburg bed must have been?
The snow falling outside, she moves her hand over Karenin’s thigh and reaches for his Johnson, or as they call it in Russia, his Sergei. Karenin slaps her hand away and turns over. Anna stares out the icy window remembering how wet she grew when Vronsky placed his hand on the small of her back at the ball.
Of course she risked social exile to be with Vronsky. Only we all think it’s because Vronsky would ravish her, make her the woman she longed to be. But that is not so. On their first night in bed together Anna mounts Vronsky. She rides him, digging her hands into his shoulders as though he was a horse and there were his reigns. Anna actually on top of a man, and for this 19th century Russia will destroy her.
Or there is this deleted scene from Hamlet. Hamlet and Ophelia lay in bed. Hamlet gets up and begins to pace. He speaks as though to himself.
Hamlet: “To take her or not to take her. That is the question. Would that she had two bodies, one to remain sacred and virginal and the other a sea of licentiousness. For I wish her to be both seraphim and harlot. Should I care for her wishes? For even if she desires my staff can I admire her grace and still soil her field? Oh, the knots in my head. What if I touched you here? Do you like that? But how can I touch you there and make you grow slippery? Oh, outrageous fortune, so much as a kiss tortures me.”
Ophelia: “Hamlet, what if I just blow you?”
I have no doubt Captain Nemo had a fetish for leather. All those seal skin boots his crew wore – metaphor baby.
And speaking of 19th century sea faring metaphors; what of Captain Ahab and his obsession with a big white whale? Ahab, you dirty dog. I bet whatever he was seeking had more girth than his peg leg.
I know of more than one woman who as a young girl fantasized about David Bowie’s Goblin King from Labyrinth; quite the codpiece on that King.
And what of ET and that spindly light up finger of his? Elliot, bend over.
I’ve always wondered what Michael Corleone would have been like between the sheets. I guess there’s before-his-Sicilian-bride-got-blown-up Michael and after-his-Sicilian-bride-got-blown-up-Michael.
The before Michael would have been playful, almost cavalier, always making sure Kaye was comfortable.
But then came the raven-haired beauty Apollonia. Michael knew what it was to kill a man. And she didn’t care for being comfortable. Apollonia wanted to know her man was strong. Michael flipped her over, put his hand over the nape of her neck and her fist hit the bed. Michael liked it. Then she got blown up. “Apollonia, No!”
The after Michael is a winter-hearted man. He wants to flip Kaye over and grab her by the neck. That’s what will break through all his darkness. But he knows she won’t enjoy that. Kay is a missionary lady. And so in bed on their wedding night Michael says to her, “Stop moving Kay. I’ll do it. This is about family.” Kay turns over and cries. Michael doesn’t have it in him to comfort her. He lights a cigarette, goes to the hotel balcony in his pajama pants and leans on the railing.
I can well imagine what it would be like to take Hermione Granger to bed. “Speed up. No, slow down. Here, just keep time to my fingers. “ Growing frustrated with the boy’s general incompetence she would cast a spell over his penis making it move to her whim. His bewitched member would fling the boy this way and that. When Hermione was done she’d release the boy and ask him, “What are you doing here?” Women across the globe would write J.K. Rowling asking her to reveal the magic spell.
James Bond, always so clear-headed, so suave. It seems like his pants never get caught on his heels, like he has panache even in taking off his underwear. He seems to be perpetually rolling women onto their backs and giving them the kind of long, soulful kisses John Le Carre spies are incapable of. But what does James Bond’s O-face look like? I can’t picture it. Is it squinched up? Elongated and open-mouthed? Does he end with a high-pitched squeal? He doesn’t seem the grunting type. Perhaps he simply clears his throat and it is done.
And what of Jesus? He didn’t start running with that whole son of man thing until he was about 30. But Jesus at 15 or 16 was not yet outside time. He was a walking gland. Did he get it on behind the woodshed with the neighbor girl? Was he kind and caring and gentle? I can see an inexperienced Jesus with his face between a young hussy’s thighs. His teeth accidentally get involved. The neighborhood hussy says not like that. “Do it unto me like you’d want me to do it unto you,” a light bulb moment for Jesus. He would later reformulate the maxim.
Judah Pollack is an award-winning writer who has been writing about sex and culture for the past five years. He writes the Erotic Philosophy column in Good Vibrations magazine as well as a column for LittleFetish.com. For years he wrote for The Spectator: The Erotic Voice of San Francisco. He was named writer of the year by the New Hampshire Press Association for his coverage of the 2004 Presidential Primary.
He was twice hit on by Allen Ginsburg but not even once by Sami Beinstein, his tenth grade crush. Judah believes life is cruel.
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Judah has done it again, another thought provoking article that identifies a fact that previously escaped notice. The sex lives of famous literary figures, what an interesting concept. It leaves me wondering about a couple of points.
Why is it that character development seems to be mutually exclusive with hot sex? Is this some bizarre extension of the doctrine of separation of church and state? Can we not enjoy fully fleshed out descriptions of a character’s thoughts, motivations and background, and yet still enjoy the internal monologue that accompanies the onset of rapturous “O” bliss?
On some level I can comprehend why there isn’t an explosive sex scene in Great Expectations or other famous literary works. However, the paucity of thorough character profiling and development in porn seems strange in its absence.
The 70s classics–Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door, Taboo, etc.–seem to come the closest, but their portrayals are still rather shallow. They explore the characters only enough to justify their licentious behavior.
The modern day titles that fall outside of the scope of the gonzo porn explosion, e.g. action/porn titles like “Rush” from Digital Playground and Private’s sweeping epics like their Russian cinderella story “Tatiana”, are moderately better with character development, but not much. More than character development, it seems these titles are tending to situational development to set up the sex scenes, and giving less attention to the development of the characters that their 70s predecessors. I suppose though that the effort shown by such films should be commended since the majority of adult titles today are just wall-to-wall sex.
Is it just a question of time availability? Is it possible to have a movie with complete characters AND hot sex scenes? Is it possible to devote the time needed to address both tasks without venturing into the territory of 4.5 hour, bloated pseudo-porn like Caligula? Has any director or porn studio ever attempted such a project since Guccione et al failed so miserably at it?
Admittedly, I am not a film aficionado, so maybe I have just not seen the right films, pornographic or otherwise. However, it would seem that there is an unexploited niche for a genre of film that can deliver the goods on both the sexual and character development sides.
The other thought that Judah’s article brought to mind is far more fanciful. The idea of a young horn dog named Jesus, someone who–according to the New Testament–could work miracles, made me wonder about the early years of others with expansive powers.
What kind of trouble could a young Superman get in to? He could use his super speed to power impregnate unsuspecting Smallville girls and spawn an army of super bastards. Even beyond the sexual dalliance, the untold riches that a Metropolis newspaper reporter named Clark Kent could harvest on Deal or No Deal with his X-ray vision could be staggering.
What would the results be if Obi Wan Kenobi was a dirty old man? Might the Jedi mind trick work something like this in cantinas, “I am the man you seek, and you want to hide my fleshy light saber. It extends quite a bit you know.” It would seem like that would have been an easy way to increase the number of Jedi needed to combat the Empire, no?
All fanciful and blasphemous musings aside, Judah’s point remains. Where readers encounter strong, well rounded characters, the sex seems to fall short. Where consumers find good sex, there are, at best, moderately developed characters. Perhaps Judah, our favorite erotic philosopher, will become a porn mogul and fill this void in the industry.
The horny Jesus as a young boy comment put me in mind of Christopher Moore’s “Lamb (The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood pal).” Mr. Moore spends a good deal of time on Jesus’s sexuality and compares it with his not so divine best friend Biff, to funny ends. Slightly “blasphemous”, but it still treats Jesus with a certain amount of humanity that perhaps the Catholic Church neglects too often.
And then there are the literary classics that were pretty steamy for their day but have since fallen prey to the Victorianization of their societies. For example, there’s a south Indian epic usually classed under ‘religious literature’ that actually just follows a prince around on his erotic adventures. (Of course, you can read it in a number of different ways, but you can’t discount the effect of the surface reading!)
Oh, and the dry boring traditional texts that suddenly throw you a sexual curveball. One Malay history takes a moment out of its recension of wars, lineages and diplomatic missions to tell us how one sultan had a wet daydream and then ordered a wife to consume the fallen semen. After that, the diligent manuscript writer informs us of a variant version where the sultan dies with an erection, creating a lot of consternation among the ministers. It is finally decided that he died while lusting after that same wife, and she is brought to fulfil her duty to her husband one last time. Ooh, necrophilia! I nearly choked on my cappucino when I came across that one!
Remember, kids — reading can be fun!