I occasionally get a question about how much detail to include in an intimate scene. I have been referring those questions to a blog I posted some time ago. About a week ago, I got an email containing much more detailed questions about sex in writing from a reader. She asked about everything from first-time sex to rape.
I must confess I have never written about rape. I have written about where rape was in a person’s background, but never about the actual event. I am not sure I could. Let me give you a bit of my writing history.
My number was about up in the draft, and I was in college in 1963. I volunteered for the draft because it let me choose my job in the Army. I was just completing my sophomore year in college. I had been writing magazine articles to earn extra money. From that point and up to the death of my first wife, I wrote nothing for publication. The last few months before her death were taken up by a new job and new housing. I’m sure you can imagine all those things going on, plus we were trying to get ready for the new addition to our family.
Suddenly, I came home to an empty house and nothing to do. I think I turned to writing once more just for something to do. I wrote for one of the shopper magazines in the Philadelphia area as a food critic. I don’t remember exactly who, but one of my workmates at the Valley Forge Research Center suggested a men’s magazine. They were looking for erotica. I quickly found out they were looking for hardcore pornography. I remember talking to the editor, who said, “I’m not interested unless they’re not at it by the second paragraph.” They also bought pornographic novels. I never wrote one of those, but I was a constant contributor to their various magazines under various pen names they gave me. I always thought I was writing for the mob.
I took the train from Philly to New York City one day. Their offices were on the second floor, not far from Times Square. Times Square in the late 1960s was very different than today. It was full of peep shows, drug dealers, and an endless variety of prostitutes. I was paid in cash from a desk drawer by “The Editor.” In quotes because I am sure he did little or nothing as an editor. It became the most boring writing job I have ever had. But it kept my mind off loneliness!
I’ll have to continue this blog tomorrow. I have a deadline I must meet or explain to a very belligerent editor why I failed to meet it.
