Desires are Human, Perversions Divine

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I don’t want to fuck my family. Not my parents, not my siblings, not my uncles (or aunts, for that matter).

Chances are you don’t want to fuck your family either. And while less than half of the stories in this collection feature relationships that are explicitly incestuous (the rest are of the intergenerational/power imbalance variety), the fact that you’re reading the preface to an erotica collection called Daddy/Boy suggests you must not be disgusted by the whole incest thing, at the least.

We’re a different breed, you see. Incest is boner (and lady-boner) kryptonite to a lot of people. Even most mainstream porn, both written and filmed, will court the intergenerational fantasy but steers clear when it comes to all-out incest. Is it worth it to ask why?

I think so. My first sustained attractions to real people started when I was eleven, to my ten-year-old best friend and his middle-aged father. Let’s call them Derrick and Paul, respectively. Derrick and I had many moments of near-experimentation, though my attraction to him was never reciprocated, as far as I know.

Paul was an interesting case. He had a body like the proverbial shit-house made of bricks. I’d be playing with Derrick and he’d come home from work, strip down to his tightie whities and wear that for the rest of the night, his hairy butch muscled body on display. He knew he was hot.

So did Derrick. It seemed natural to my young and hormone-drunk mind to fantasize about them together, though my sexual imagination at that time was limited. I’d picture them piling into their bathtub and sliding their naked bodies together.

It never occurred to me that I was eroticizing a taboo. I didn’t feel any shame around it – well, no more than I felt about having gay sex fantasies in general (which was a lot of shame, in fact). Sometimes I’d put Derrick’s older brother in that tub too, and why not? They were all pretty hot. They seemed hotter all mushed together.

They say a lot of your sexual interests are imprinted from what you encounter at a young age, and I think that’s true in the case of my relationship with these two guys: my love for big asses, muscles and cocky attitudes, for starters.

Incest, too. But there’s always a push to try to explain the taboo fetishes over the more culturally acceptable ones. You can pathologize a fetish all you want and it really won’t get you anywhere. Maybe I didn’t have a strong enough father figure in my life? Neither do a lot of people, and maybe we all want a big strong daddy to slap us around but I doubt it. Either way it ain’t no thang.

Still, there’s something interesting about the disconnect between our familial and sexual relationships. We’re as close to our families as we are to our sexual partners, yet we don’t have sex with our families. On both sides of the equation there’s potential for those feelings to get mixed up and confused.

Even as I got older and was able to process that the fantasies I was having were incest fantasies, it was always clear to me that it wasn’t my own family that I was fantasizing about, it was some mythically hot fantasy family.

Maybe that’s what’s so difficult for people to understand. The gag-reflex reaction that most people have when confronted with incest is one of those instinctual things, with good genetic reason. The fact that people like you and I are turned on by it proves that we’re able to overcome that animal portion of our brains.

Clearly, we’re more highly evolved.

So, you might ask yourself, what are Amazon’s content guidelines and why didn’t my book conform to them? First, the guidelines state that Amazon doesn’t publish pornography. Which, unless I somehow dreamed the fact that I’ve sold hundreds of my previous ebook of erotic fiction, is bullshit.

There’s only one other section of the content guidelines that could possibly apply to Daddy/Boy, and here is where it gets frightening/hilarious. I quote:

Offensive Content
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.

That’s literally it. See for yourself. I find this utterly insulting. I’ve spent too much of my life being shamed by society for my sexual predilections to get shamed by a shady-ass corporation. Daddy/Boy contains a disclaimer at the outset that it is fiction, and that all the characters are eighteen years of age or older. But the age/underage thing is the only reason I can think that Amazon would reject the book. The point is that I don’t know for sure. Maybe they objected to the word “boy” in the title? Maybe they don’t accept incest erotica? I could make changes to conform to what I “would expect” an unoffensive book would/wouldn’t contain, but here’s the real kicker:

We may also terminate your participation in the KDP program if you don’t adhere to these content guidelines.

So if the book is rejected again they could terminate my participation and then I wouldn’t be able to sell anything on Amazon. For a writer who is scrambling to make a living with my art, this is a rude wake-up call. So far as I can tell, when it comes to making money with ebooks Amazon is just about the only game in town. (Full disclosure: I have yet to experiment with self-publishing through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Apple or any other online outlets, and I was intending to do so with this ebook, but I suspect the money isn’t as good as Amazon).

Amazon holds to key to my future at this point and so I’m beholden to their will, whatever it might be. I’m cool with that. I’ll toe the line, rejigger, figure something out. I sent Amazon an email: “Can you give me any specifics on why the title was rejected so I may not make the same mistake again?” Do you suppose I’ll get an adequate response? I’m dubious.

UPDATE: Seems incest is something Amazon objects to after all. Good to know. How hard is that to put in their fucking guidelines?

Features fourteen tales of intergenerational sex, including one brand-new previously-unpublished story, “Chuck and Skippy,” plus an entertaining preface and quasi-entertaining story annotations. Will be available on Smashwords and Amazon. Cover design by Johnny Murdoc.

I exercised my constitutional right to disable my Facebook profile yesterday. I’m on Twitter so if you want to follow me feel free to do so: @nattysoltesz. Though I almost never post on Twitter because I don’t understand its purpose, beyond attempts to get the attention of people more famous than me. Am I missing something?

I’m feeling focused lately, which is one of the reasons I’m trying to minimize my distractions. Man, I read this great book yesterday – and I mean I really did read the entire thing in one day. Dream School by Blake Nelson. I got it from the library and I was holding off on reading it, because I knew it was going to be good. Finally I picked it up yesterday morning and I read it all day. It was so wonderful. I’d do something, take a break, then come right back into that world because I never wanted to leave.

Anyway it was inspiring because it’s about this college girl discovering that she’s a writer. And the voice is just effortless, and Nelson doesn’t waste any time on events, he just plows right through this girl’s life and goes on to the next thing that happens, then the next thing, then the next thing… It’s rare for me to get inspired by a book I admire, usually I just feel crippled by greatness that I’ll never live up to – bad books are typically more motivating.

I’m inspired to finish this novel I’m working on which – fuck it – is a sequel to 428 College St, and it’s called 691 Suburban Dr. I’m also working on a new ebook called Daddy/Boy, which is going to be a collection of my intergenerational/incest stories, most of which have already been published but I’m going to include at least one new story, plus an introduction, plus a section of annotations and notes on the stories which is painfully self-indulgent but fuck it, it’s my ebook and I can do whatevah I want.

So those are my two main projects at the moment. Daddy/Boy should be out around the beginning of February. ‘Suburban Dr,’ who knows, but I know I’ve found myself drawing out the process of writing it because I’m so happy to be working consistently on something, but I think it’s to the detriment of the book. So I don’t want to say too much about this but I am determined to tell the story a little faster and not worry about length so much and just tell the damn story and get it out. So hopefully that’s good news.

What else? By the way I should be leaving for work right now but I’m putting it off, because it’s my Monday (I work Tues-Sat) and I’m not looking forward to it. Basically, I’m trying to become a full-time writer. I haven’t mentioned it extensively on this blog, but Str8 but Curious has been successful beyond my wildest dreams, and it’s made me believe that I could actually support myself solely through writing, and that is an incredibly exciting prospect to me. So I’m optimistic about the future, and also pretty damn scared because there is so much to consider.

I dreamt last night that President Obama and I were in my backyard and he smoked me up with this incredible weed, and I was so stoked because I’d get to tell my grandchildren that President Obama got me high. Plus he was so cool and chill and we were just hanging out. I was disappointed when I woke up. He’s totally getting my vote this year.

1) Backwoods was submitted to the Lambda Literary Awards in the ‘gay erotica’ category, which doesn’t really mean anything as there’s a bunch of books submitted. They’ll announce five or so finalists eventually, so we’ll see.

2) Dennis Cooper, one of my literary heroes, listed Backwoods as one of his favorite LGBTQ books of 2011.

3) Backwoods got its first Amazon review.

4) I’m working on another book, slow and steady, but it’s coming. Not to say too much about (I don’t want to jinx it) but it’s a novel (a real novel, not a novel-in-stories like Backwoods), it’s erotic and it features characters I’ve written about before.

**One that I forgot to add: I did a short piece on Point horror books for my good friend Laurie’s blog, Yinzr Readin.

Furthermore, I have yet to see a copy of it. I can’t believe it. How is it that I could conceivably order a copy off of fucking Amazon and see it in two or three days, yet I haven’t seen it?

YES I’M FRUSTRATED.

Every day I come home and hope to see it on my doorstep, and every day I’m disappointed. It’s passed the point where I’m even going to be excited about it. I’m just going to be relieved and a little less annoyed.

ARRRGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH

Don’t Be It, Dream It
by Natty Soltesz

I’ve had my share of straight guys. Maybe I’ve had my fill.

I bagged the majority during my college years, that magical time when sexual identity is as addled and messy as a frat boy after his third keg stand. One straight drunk buddy made out with me at a party then invited me to his bedroom to trade blowjobs. Another got so horny looking at straight porn he whacked me off and let me return the favor.

And I’ve had others since then. Dalliances in secluded park paths and in the backrooms of adult bookstores, those playgrounds of the minivan-and-wedding-band set. Hookups with masc, discreet Internet-personals advertisers who need to be fucked quick before the gf gets home.

All of them “straight,” though in varying degrees of believability. My penchant for straight guys has come through most strongly in my writing, and I’m aware of the inherent irony in an oeuvre of gay porn about straight guys. I’ve joked that my characters think they’re straight but are actually bisexual; these days I use the term “straight-ish” to describe them. It’s something of a cop out but it serves my purposes. I’m certainly interested in the intersection of sexual identity and behavior, but I prefer to leave those conversations to the queer theorists (who need something to talk about).

My fascination lies in the fantasy of the straight guy, that persistent and near-ubiquitous gay male fetish for guys who prefer pussy but will reach for other forms of relief in a pinch. Internet porn teems with these representations, site after site of guys who only do it cause they’re horny, or tricked, or need the money.

One particular video that was making the Internet rounds a few years back had a straight-identified performer doggy-style fucking a guy whilst reading a pussy mag he’d draped over the bottom’s back. This crossed a line for many and seemed to distill the love/hate boner/shame relationship many gay men have with “straight guys.”

I thought it was hot, maybe because I make a strong distinction between representation and reality. Trading blowjobs with that guy in college was fun – having him alienate me as he fell in love with a mutual female friend was not fun. I got such a crush on one of my best straight buddies that I nearly ruined the friendship with my hopeless pining.

It’s true that there’s an element of self defeat and self hatred when it comes to fetishizing straight guys. But most of our sexual fantasies tend toward the unattainable – otherwise it’s unlikely they’d be fantasies. So it’s okay to jack off while imagining blowing your hetero married boss under his desk, but it’s not an aspiration worth losing your job for. To insist upon the fantasy is at best pathetic, at worst a tragedy. It’s not much of a waking life when you’re hung up on a dream.

So yeah, I’ll always turn my head for a little butch swagger. A football jersey, a gold chain, a splash of Drakkar Noir. But when it gets down to getting down I’d rather have the dude who’s got a spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye. He’s more likely to be aware of what he’s doing, and do it better, and do it with me again.

Just click on the button below to order it. I will send the PDF to the email address that you use for PayPal. If you’d prefer me to send it to a different email, be sure to note this when you donate.