- Question submitted by Anonymous and answered by Whiskey Blue as part of Everyone Is Gay: Second Opinions.

Whiskey Says:

Dear reader,

Thanks for writing in. This is a great question. Let’s identify what erotica is, and what it is about erotica that might compel you to feel like you’re not enough. I see two parts to your question, and I’ll start with the first part: what is erotica?

Erotica is a part of literature, and literature really boils down to people sharing stories. In literature we get to explore deeper aspects of the human experience, many of which elude us in the day-to-day but strike a chord on a profound and universal level, which is the very source of their depth and of their magic. When your girlfriend reads Shakespeare or J.K. Rowling, do you feel she wants you to start reciting sonnets or become a wizard? Maybe this sounds absurd but I think it sheds some light on how erotica is looked at differently when it needn’t be.

For example, the ideas your girlfriend encounters reading Romeo and Juliet or Harry Potter will make their way into her psyche and she will likely want to talk to you about these ideas. Perhaps they will illuminate something to her, perhaps she will find wisdom that helps her through a difficult experience, perhaps they will simply enrich her life by exposing her to new worlds, new ideas. And perhaps she will be compelled to audition for a play or write one of her own or dress up as Harry Potter for Halloween or ask you to come with her to his theme park just she might learn about something she wants to try, or find a model for something she has been wanting to do, when she reads erotica.

All of this is just fine. All of this is simply an opportunity to open her world up, to and invite new experiences into her life and also yours. You’re free to engage or disengage just the way you are free to go to the Harry Potter theme park or not. You’re also free to just think about it, maybe borrow the book and see for yourself what it is she is reading. There are infinite possibilities. Reading erotica just means reading stories with an interest in sexual or sensual experience, really. The reason it takes on a life of its own is because of our perception of erotica. The nature of the literary genre though is just that it’s a literary genre.

The second part of your question has to do with feeling you aren’t enough (for your girlfriend). It’s wonderful that you’re self-aware enough to identify how you feel and why you might feel this way. There are many possible reasons for your feeling this way. Perhaps you think that whatever she reads in a piece of erotica, she will want or expect you to try with her. Perhaps this challenges your comfort zone, and that’s totally understandable. The unknown can seem especially threatening.

Random ideas (some threatening, some titillating) pop into your mind when you think of your girlfriend reading erotica, and these ideas have little to do with the act of reading erotica. They have to do with projections – perfectly understandable and genuine projections. In truth, erotica is not a competition against your desirability or a challenge to the intimacy you share with your girlfriend. Erotica is an exploration just as reading a book is an exploration. To read is to imagine possibilities we have not necessarily experienced for ourselves. Some of these experiences we will never have ourselves, some we will, and all of this is true of everything we read. Because of its sexual nature, erotica can strike a vulnerable chord but this is a reflection of our emotional landscape, not of erotica as a genre.

This morning I was reading the Rebecca Solnit essay about Virginia Woolf, called Woolf’s Darkness. In this essay – the word “essay” is a direct translation of the French word essai, which literally means an attempt) this darkness is a metaphor for ideas we might fear or resist because their mystery challenges the limits of our own realities. I would posit that sexuality – the erotic – is a concept that exists mostly in darkness; it is shrouded in mystery, in curiosity, in unpredictability and taboo and the greatest, most un-tameable of things: desire.

Both Woolf and Solnit offer that darkness is a place of boundless possibility; that it is the very place from which creativity originates. I would say that erotica is a genre of writing that endeavors to wrestle with mysterious parts of the human psyche (and body) and that reading erotica is a fascinating and exciting endeavor. Surely your girlfriend will be enriched by this experience, and I can assure you that her reading erotica has little to do with you and much more to do with herself, and her own curiosity and sexuality. At the end of the day, your sexuality belongs to you and your girlfriend’s sexuality belongs to her. If she is talking to you about erotica or wanting to share it with you, this is an invitation to explore new world together. It’s an expression of trust and a reflection of her desire FOR you. She wants to share something with you.

In sharing this experience – whether by reading side by side or borrowing the book or finding your own collection of erotic stories or trying out something you read about or simply asking your girlfriend what book she is reading and then talking about it one afternoon just as you might talk about anything else – you’re welcoming new possibilities into your life and your relationship. And I think this invitation to explore together is exactly what we mean when we talk about erotica, and intimacy.

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