Liz Everly's Blog, page 91

The Other Wedding Buffet: Here Come the Groomsmen

Sure, they’re nice. But can I see what your groomsmen look like?

By Alexa Day

This is the first warm Saturday I’ve seen in a pretty long time, and I spent it on the beach with my notebook, in front of my favorite beachside biker bar. At sunset, a wedding took place in the little gazebo not far from my blanket. The bride wore a pale green dress, bedecked with sequins, and she posed with her bridesmaids for photos just as darkness fell.

That’s my kind of wedding. I love nontraditional bridal fashions, and the bridesmaids apparently got to choose dresses for themselves, so long as they all wore the same color. But the best part was that I was far away from the whole thing. I was a bystander and not a guest.

A couple of years ago, I made an agreement with myself that I wasn’t attending any more weddings. Now that I’m a certain age, I don’t have to avoid many such joyous occasions, but I try to steer clear of them anyway. The wedding isn’t really a single girl’s event, truth be told. It’s murder to find someone to bring — like the office party, it is not something to which one invites a man outside a relationship. Then there’s the Singles Quarantine, the one table that is home to all the uncoupled guests … and sometimes unchaperoned children as well.

And of course, there’s all the questioning about why this isn’t your wedding.

Stronger people than I continue to attend weddings in spite of all this. Maybe they honestly enjoy them, and maybe they buy into that shopworn threat that unless they attend and have a delightful time, then no one will come when their magical day finally arrives. I don’t know. I can only say that at this point, the only thing that could convince me to attend even one more wedding is a prime set of groomsmen.

Friends, groomsmen are like the other wedding buffet. While the other guests can only look with their eyes, a single girl gets to enjoy a fine assortment of groomsmen to their very fullest. And there’s a lot to enjoy.

The groomsmen are all generally in a good mood, if a bit hungover. The wedding is the culmination of a days-long party for the gentlemen. They’re able to enjoy their friend’s day a bit differently (for one thing, Western wedding traditions don’t seem to rely on bedeviling single men about their status). They’re relaxed and having a good time in a festive setting, which means they’re amenable to flirting with single guests.

They’re all freshly pressed in fancy dress for the special occasion. They might even be in kilts. Be honest — what chance do we have to see that many dudes in kilts in one place? Sure, changing fashions don’t even demand a tie for weddings anymore, but as long as the chance of kilts is higher than zero, I say that hope springs eternal.

Finally, after the happy couple is off to spend their wedding night together, the groomsmen are left with a bit of time on their hands. Their responsibilities are for the most part taken care of, and they drift over toward the alcohol in search of something to do. Suddenly, not bringing a plus one is a very good idea. After all, if one is with a man, one can’t take another man home. It’s bad form. Don’t ask how I know.

So who has a scandalous story featuring a groomsman (or groomsmen, I’m open-minded like that)? Has anyone ever met a married groomsman? Who else has sworn off weddings altogether? Speak now.

And follow Lady Smut. We’ll plight your troth real good.

Sexy Saturday Round-Up

By Liz Everly and the Lady Smut Bloggers

Hello, Sexy! Welcome to your Saturday! We’ve been scouring the Internets for the best blog posts this week. Sit back, have fun, and read.

From Liz:

The myth of lesbian bed death.

Is this a cool blog, or what?

New female-run sex-toy company focuses on hands-free sex toys.

Great interview with Carly Phillips.

From Elizabeth:

Chocolate a**holes and female viagra ice cream – file them under things we don’t need.

Do you want to see what your vagina looks like when you orgasm? Really? Well, then, there’s a vibrator for that.

Nursing a broken heart from a recent break-up? The BouceBackBox might help you heal faster.

There’s evil hiding behind that supposedly healthy coconut milk. Latte drinkers – beware!

From CMK:

Jason Statham Dances for you (okay, for 90s music videos)

On Squirting

Laverne Cox goes nude in Allure

From Madeline:

Jealous much? Here’s why.

100 horrifying years of Women in advertising.

What if we drop the ‘plus’ in Plus Model?

Ask Men’s Outstanding women of 2015

Stay Hungry,

Liz

How I Started Lusting After Silver Foxes

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

I’ve always had a thing for older men, ever since I lost my virginity to a 31-year-old when I was 17, but there’s a difference between older, but in what feels like a reasonable range, and much, much older. At least, there has been for me. Looking back on that dalliance from the summer after I graduated high school, that relationship seems more than a little creepy. It wasn’t the 14 years per se, but the vast span in life experiences. As an adult, I can appreciate that there’s an appeal to an older man who owns his sexiness, who’s as confident as he ever was, possibly more so. Think Roger Sterling on Mad Men (sans this season’s moustache).

Two years ago, I finally figured out in a deeply personal way what the appeal is in silver foxes. A silver fox, for the uninitiated, is defined at Urban Dictionary as “An attractive older man. Generally, one that has gray hair and is often desired by younger women.” For instance: Anderson Cooper (yes, I know he’s gay, but not only is that definition heterosexist, women can be attracted to gay men, obviously).

So in 2013, I was flying to New York from London after attending Eroticon UK, tucked into a window seat, fully prepared to mind my own business and zone out with a book or sleep my way back to the Big Apple. I was grateful for the empty seat between myself and the older gentleman in the aisle. For the most part, even though I’ve edited a book of mile high club erotica, I like my me time during air travel.

But my row-mate, after about an hour, wanted to chat. “Let’s trade books,” he suggested, and, not wanting to be rude, I agreed even though his tome was something like How to Play the Sitar. I handed him my novel, whose title I also can’t recall, but I do remember I was using a postcard for my women’s erotica anthology Fast Girls, with its topless cover model staring right at the viewer, as a bookmark. “What’s this?” he asked, and I went for honesty rather than expediency, and told him, “It’s my book. I edit erotica.”

What ensued was one of the most interesting conversations with a stranger I’ve ever had. He asked if I knew of any erotica about people his age; he was 74, precisely double my age at the time, 37. As it happened, I was reading a galley of Joan Price’s Ageless Erotica, by and about people over 50, on my laptop at the time. I told him about it, while he shared tidbits about his life, including that he had a girlfriend.

We weren’t flirting, but there was an erotic undercurrent to the conversation that shocked me. When I shifted so my skirt accidentally rode up to reveal my knee, he said something about my knee being cute. Neither of us said anything untoward or over-the-top, but the energy passing between us was enough to make me rethink my possible upper age limit when it came to who I might bed. I was in a relationship and not looking to hook up with him or anyone else, but during our casual chat, I sensed that, had we met each other at, say, a bar, and each been single, perhaps we might have wound up in bed together. (We didn’t, but I did take our literary exchange and turn it into the basis of an older woman/younger man story called “Book Swap” in Rose Caraway’s anthology The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica.)

Only one other time have I been attracted to someone whose age jarred me in a similar way. I met an older man at a party called Pleasure Salon, and wound up visiting him in London. When I found out he was a grandfather, that fact, more than his chronological age, gave me pause. What did it mean? I kept asking myself.

Well, now that I’ve had a few years to consider these various incidents, I’ve decided that it simply means I recognize that age, while not irrelevant, isn’t a deterrent to my attractions. I’m far more likely to be interested in someone 10 or even 20 years older than me than I am to lust after someone 10 or 20 years my junior.

It’s one thing to give lip service to the sex lives of our elders, and another to recognize that desire, lust and sexuality don’t simply slip away when we hit 60, 70, 80 or beyond. Those hours on the plane helped me appreciate the sex appeal of the silver fox, which I hope has in turn made me a better, and more empathetic, erotica writer. I look forward to incorporating some silver foxes, and foxy silver-haired ladies, into my erotic tales.

Yes Professor: Confessions of a Sophophiliac

by Madeline Iva

Have you ever watched the grim television procedural show CRIMINAL MINDS? For those of you out there who are turned on by learning, Dr. Reid is brain teasing catnip.

On the show he is a walking computer of history.  Not only has he read far and wide in the classics, not only does he know his poets, playwrights, and arcane urban factoids, but he kills it in the cardigan department and when seeking out possible friends, heads for the girls first.

Yes, this boy-man is not the cold analytic machine usually presented on TV.  He is all intellectual probity and vulnerable sensibility wrapped up in a model-skinny tousel-haired package.  I.e. he is sexy.  Well, sexy-ish. The kicker is when he falls in love with a woman through talking to her on the phone.  His version of foreplay is a four hour conversation. He doesn’t care what she looks like, he loves her mind first, last, and foremost.

Swoon!

If you like Dr. Reid–if you obsess a little bit over Dr. Reid–then you my friend are probably a sophophiliac–someone who is sexually turned on by learning.

Is this the fascination that grips students who have affairs with their professors? After all, they say your biggest sexual organ is your brain. (This illicit pairing is second in popularity only to doctors boinking nurses.) We’ve talked about the evolutionary advantage of smart guys on the blog before.  Mating with smart men means having smart babies–right? Well, to a degree.  Smart men presumably have access to plentiful resources and in their geeky-shy social ineptitude perhaps are less likely to stray.

All of these criteria are stereotypes, however.  It’s possible for the smart man to be unemployed, for the genius to be socially savvy, for the man who has studied physics to be a playa and a cad.  I’ve learned the hard way never to make assumptions about guys blessed with brains.

Not to look your typical cranially gifted in the mouth, but it seems to me that the best part of being with a smart guy is he can keep up with your own intellectual powers of conversation. Alas, academics are often only interested in their one small area of research, and only want to talk with others in their field about that topic.  Give me your polymath instead, your intellectually open and curious fellow — give me your Dr. Reid, in fact–any day over a narrow-minded academic.

An original thinker will have interesting things to say about the world around you — and life will never be boring as a result.  Meanwhile, observe the competitive nature of brainiacs.  Academics are often as ruthlessly competitive at sports as they are in their departments.  Compensating much?

Unfortunately, Dr. Reid is often subjected to the competitive ill-will of his team, a kind of mild bullying by the anti-intellectual elements on the show.  The show also indulges in some needless intellectual snobbery–throwing around the idea that someone with endless intellectual curiosity is a freak, that someone precocious is inexperienced in carnal matters, and a genius is often beyond the reach of mere mortals–who are deemed contemptible in return.

On the internet there are tons of naughty fan fiction stories devoted to Dr. Reid. They love him so much they kinda want to squeeze him to death.

While on the show he is a power lifter when it comes to intellectual reasoning, he is also portrayed as innocent of experience–perhaps even a virgin.  They show him at one point charming a woman with slight-of-hand skills and at other points he is able to spin his own duplicitous web when needed to catch a killer.  Yet his personal pleasures involve foreign language movie festivals–sans sub-titles, or other areas where a substantial geek arcana is required.  Ultimately, one understands he experiences a lonely existence, and a kind of upside down world where normal experiences slightly torture him.

In other words…my kinda guy!

And while many of our friends are very smart–most of them are happy to put away the brains, grab a beer and just hang out.  But I submit that ‘hanging out’ is a horrid conundrum to the pure intellectual. This kind of guy wants to graze upon intense topics, rigorously chew over the details of his latest obsession, tidy his ideas, and conquer theoretical concepts for fun–because he can.  The Dr. Reid type intellectual has a mind that can go the distance 24/7.

The best part about intellectual guys I’ve known and loved is that at heart they’re turned off by bimbos. They have standards of attractiveness that have nothing to do with make-up, cleavage, or popularity. One can stand before this kind of guy and let one’s naked intellect shine.  In summation, the man who likes smart women–who needs an intelligent woman as his partner in life–is truly sexy.

So what’s your I.Q.? If you’re a smarty-pants in touch with your smexy side, follow us at Lady Smut.com. We’ll whisper inductive reasoning proofs in your ear all night long.

 

A Champ in the Sack, Perfect Gentleman, and Gazillionaire – Are Your Guy Standards Too High?

Mr. Perfect

By Elizabeth Shore

A former work colleague of mine once went on a date with a guy whose online profile exactly matched the type she was looking for. He was good looking, shared similar interests, had a decent job. So she went on the date, had a nice time, but nonetheless knew after the first minute that she wouldn’t date him again. Holy cats, why not?! Did he turn out to be an axe murderer or something? Not at all. Nothing quite that petty. It’s just that the sports jacket he wore was ill fitting.

I am, I assure you, not making this up. I thought she was nuts. I told her so. She said that a guy who “doesn’t know how to dress” is not someone she can see spending the rest of her life with. So in her, er, “rational” mind, it was best to cut the ties immediately rather than string along a relationship that was surely doomed to fail.

That seemed like a big ol’ bucket of crazy to me, and as far as I know the woman is still single. But she would surely say that she simply has high standards and he didn’t meet them. End of story. However, according to author and relationship expert Matthew Hussey, before deciding that high standards are the reason some women have trouble meeting a romantic partner, we ought to first ask ourselves three questions to determine whether it’s standards that are too high or whether there’s really something else going on.

Hussey’s career in the love biz actually began as a relationship coach to men. After working with over 10,000 of them, he found himself getting approached more and more frequently by women who wanted to know – from the f**k ton of data he’d amassed over the years – what the secrets were to getting the guy. So Hussey, no dummy – and rather nice eye candy, I might add – quickly founded gettheguy.co.uk and began helping the gals better understand men.

When Hussey gets asked by women whether they can’t get a man because their standards are too high, Hussey says he tells them to answer the following three questions:

1. Are you looking for someone who actually exists? Think about what your “requirements” list and whether it goes something like this: fantastic looking, champion in the sack, boatloads of money, body like a gladiator, worships everything about you. Sound familiar? If that’s the case, says Hussey, good luck with all that. You’re on an endless seach for nonexistent perfection. Hussey isn’t saying lower your standards, but rather have standards that exist in the real world.

2. The second thing we women should ask is whether our high standards are just a defense mechanism to prevent ourselves from getting rejected. Many women he meets, says Hussey, take themselves out of the dating game by throwing up their hands in resignation and saying they can’t find anyone who meets their standards. We’re so picky, and this or that is wrong with the guy, so of course we can’t find anyone. Then what happens is that these types of women end up dating from within a “safe” pool of men who will never reject them. Problem is, these guys aren’t really the ones we want, and they don’t meet our standards, so we’re back to saying that our standards are too high. The vicious circle is alive and well. Hussey says if this is the case, then the change that’s needed is not to lower your standards or think they’re too high, but rather to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Don’t date the safe guys you don’t want; keep your standards but accept that it could mean getting rejected and be OK with that possibility.

3. Last question: Are you enforcing your standards too soon? Remember the colleague complaining about the ill-fitting sports jacket? She falls dead center in this category. By enforcing her requirement from second one, she’s preventing herself from developing a connection with anyone. In this same way, you can also skew your own standards. Let’s say the guy my work colleague met wore a sports jacket that fit him to perfection. Other habits or personality traits he may have that didn’t jive with hers may be mistakenly discarded by convincing herself that he’s gotta be strong relationship potential because at least his jacket fit right. Oy! But the good fitting sports jacket is important to her. Why should she lower that standard? She shouldn’t, says Hussey. But in the beginning of the dating process, give people a chance. Get to know them at least a little bit. Cast a wide net initially, and then get more narrow as you decide with whom you’ll embark on a real relationship.

So there you have it. Three easy tips on snagging your perfect guy – as long as your perfect guy isn’t found only in a, you know, romance novel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting It On, Medieval Style

Medieval M/M!

by C. Margery Kempe 

The thing with being a medievalist is that you never run out of material; since the period covers roughly a thousand years, there’s always something you don’t know. So I’m always running across works I don’t know, especially in the later periods. I do the early stuff — Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, the people who shout RAHR! and believe that warriors rock.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

So when I occasionally lift my head from Beowulf and the vikings, I uncover new treasures that are fun, just for a change of pace. I’ve been discovering more works from medieval Scotland and getting into William Dunbar, who wrote a lot of comic and satirical verse, including one called, “A Wooing in Dunfermline” which might sound like a sweet poem, but oh baby, it’s all double entendres. This is how it opens:

This hindir nycht in Dumfermeling

To me was tawld ane windir thing:

That lait ane tod wes with ane lame

And with hir playit and maid gud game,

Syne till his breist did hir imbrace

And wald haif riddin hir lyk ane rame –

And that me thocht ane ferly cace.

The other night in Dunfermline

To me was told a wondrous thing:

That recently a fox was with a lamb

And with her played and made good game,

Then to his breast did her embrace

And would have ridden her like a ram —

And that seemed to me a surprising thing!

I’m not sure what’s weirder: interspecies sexiness is one thing but he’s also planning to make a meal of her! He plays with her as if with a fox pup, the poet says, but she calls out for Mary to protect her. But it may not be for the obvious reason:

He wes ane lusty reid haird lowry,

Ane lang taild beist and grit with all.

He was a lusty red-haired fox

And a long tailed beast and great withal.

The suggestion that he’s well endowed gets deflated in the next part when the poet makes a pun, saying “The silly lame wes all to small” which literally means “the innocent lamb was too small” but it also means “useless lome”; ‘lome’ is another word for penis (and we always need new words, right?). The lamb is portrayed as sexy:”Scho wes ane morsall of delyte” [She was a morsel of delight] and “yung and tender” — again playing on the food/sex confusion. But the poet seems astonished that with all this danger she did not try to defend herself, even though “He grippit hir abowt the west” and “lute him kis hir lusty face.”

However, the fox swears “That he suld nocht tuich hir prenecod” that is he wouldn’t touch her ‘pincushion'; there’s some more sexy vocabulary for you. You can see how it came to be slang for lady parts. Ooh baby, stick a pin in me! Of course the poet points out that she was foolish to believe him. They went behind closed doors, the poet says, so he couldn’t really see what happened yet he knows that “all the hollis wes stoppit hard” [all the holes were stopped hard].

Just when it all seems over, the wolf shows up. Continuing the theme of devourer as lover, the wolf seems to be the rightful lover of the lamb,who shows alarm or maybe pleasure when “cheipit lyk a mows” [squeaked like a mouse]. The fox makes his escape with a bizarre cross-dressing move, slinking away in the sheep’s skin, while the wolf suspects nothing and, as the poet notes, crawls in to take “secound place” like a cuckolded lover.

Ane ferly cace indeed!

Gloving Up in Romance

by Kiersten Hallie Krum

This seems to have been my week for sex articles. First was this Wonk-o-mance piece from Cara McKenna, Herpily Ever After, about STIs in romance and the lack thereof. Then I read this in-depth investigative article by Slate We Should Have a Better Condom by Now. Here’s Why We Don’t.

The condom article is well worth the long read as it’s fascinating and at times deeply disturbing. In it, the author cites a 2014 study that concluded most people most people do not like latex condoms. I’ll admit that discomfort and latex allergies etc are valid issues with regard to condom quality. But consider the alternative. And then there’s this:

In the 2010 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, the largest-ever nationally representative sexuality study, 45 percent of men and 63 percent of women who’d most recently had sex with a “new acquaintance” hadn’t used a condom. More alarmingly, 75 percent of women who weren’t using a back-up birth control method reported not using a condom the last time they’d had sex. Adults who’d had anal sex in the past year—the highest-risk sexual act with regard to HIV transmission—said they’d used condoms only 20 percent of the time.

What fool doesn’t wear a condom?! What woman doesn’t make sure her chosen fool of the moment is wearing a condom? But wait, there’s more.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a correlation between not liking condoms and not using them: The authors of a 2007 study of condoms and sexual pleasure wrote, “Men who believed that condoms reduced pleasure were less likely to use them.” And in a 2013 study in which researchers interviewed men who used condoms inconsistently, “By far the most frequently reported downside of using a condom was diminished physiological sensation.”

And then there’s this bit from last February in The New York Observer, which claimed that Almost No One in New York Wears Condoms

A whopping 68.2 percent of residents polled said they did not wear a condom the last time they had sex, according to some numbers just released by the Department of Health’s Community Health Survey for 2012. That correlates to 1,408,000 people using protection as opposed to 2,669,000 that prefer to just cross their fingers.

Cross their fingers. You are freaking kidding me.

I take safe sex very seriously. I grew up in the 80s; I remember the AIDS crisis very well. I remember how nobody knew shit for a very long time. My mother, the RN, used to give my sister and I uncomfortable updates on how not to catch AIDS in non-sexual ways, like telling us not to sit on public toilets seats, or at least lay down strips of toilet paper first, which is not a bad idea hygienically, but will do fuck all against AIDS, mostly because you don’t catch it from toilet seats, obviously. I also grew up in an evangelical fundamentalist community where sex before marriage was bad, bad I say!, along with the threat of how pregnancy would ruin your life because you weren’t strong enough to resist temptations of the flesh. I spent years getting my head around the moral and spiritual complexities of being a Christian woman who wasn’t waiting for nothin’. So yeah, I’m pretty damn serious about safe sex.

Every so often, someone will query on social media whether or not readers notice if and when contraception is used in a romance. I 100% do. I’ve been known to go back into a sex/love scene looking for the condom moment or some acknowledgement by the heroine as to at least being on the pill or having an IUD (which doesn’t account for STIs but at least it’s something.) I do not care if it “ruins the moment” either on the page or in real life (and there’s an Irish soccer instructor out there somewhere who will attest to that fact.) As a romance writer, it is my responsibility to have my characters practice safe sex in a demonstrable way or to at least acknowledge if and when they don’t and why.

It makes zero sense to me to exclude some acknowledgement of safe sex in romance novels. Contraception has been around for centuries though harder (heh) to get in some than others depending on your social strata and your gender. I’m seeing more overt acknowledgement of condom use, specifically, or a reason for it’s lack (dystopian future where everyone is infertile, which, again, doesn’t address disease) and even matter-of-fact conversations between partners upon realizing they forgot that crucial component. I remember them because they’re still the exception to the rule, not the norm.

Sure, some readers only want an escape in their romance novels. I respect that. Interjecting a moment of reality while the hero gloves up might pour some cold water on all the fantastical gasping and thrusting. But in an age with studies like those listed above that show people still find reasons not to practice safe sex, when we’re writing novels that focus on love and (to varying degrees) sex, we have a unique platform with which to remind people of how important and relatively easy it is to adhere.

Romance novels are feminist fiction. For years, they have been platforms through which social issues concerning women have been illuminated. Romance novels have explored everything from marital abuse to marriages for reasons other than love to being a single parent to healing familial discord to any number of societal issues. Nowadays they explore feelings of self-worth or lack thereof and disparages in income in the modern world. Romance novels are known for inspiring their readers personally to expect more for themselves, to be the heroine of their own story, to find an inner strength they may not have ever known they had before to tackle whatever hurdles may exist in their real lives. Safe sex is part and parcel of all that and I for one am confident that it can handle this dose of reality as effortlessly as all the rest.

Follow Lady Smut.

Giving Good Tongue: A (Dirty) Word on Sexual Language

Can you see the Ural Mountains from here? (Image: Christian Fischer)

By Alexa Day

Tits.

It’s such a little word, right? The last on George Carlin’s iconic list of Seven Dirty Words. Short, punchy and a little coarse. The word rolled out of me and onto the draft of a short story, and as soon as I saw it there, I stopped for a just a second to consider it.

I’d spent the whole draft trying to find a way to refer to the heroine’s breasts without being repetitive. I loathe most of the euphemisms I see out there now — mounds, globes, what have you. I mean, who looks down at her own chest and sees globes? Just thinking of the word conjures the image of a beige ridge marked with the neatly printed words “URAL MOUNTAINS.” I envision the old republics of the USSR. I see Czechoslovakia, not breasts.

Those cute little nicknames don’t work for me, either. I’m not going to write about “the girls.” I don’t even care for “boobs;” I think it’s something we teach little girls to use in polite society without telling them when to abandon it.

And so, in the throes of drafting, “tits” happened. I paused for a minute to decide whether it was okay. Most of the Seven Dirty Words are rather commonplace in erotic romance today. I don’t think the world will take issue with “tits,” but I haven’t heard from an editor yet, so it’s still anyone’s guess. If she thinks it’s too much, I’ll have to decide whether to fight for it, but for now, I’m rooting for it. If I lose “tits,” I stand to lose a lot more.

Why?

The ugly truth about erotic romance is this: it’s sexual. It’s very sexual. And since the sex is linked to the emotional arc of the characters, it’s going to run the gamut from something ethereal and spiritual to something savage and dark. I think erotic romance has to be this way, honestly. How are the characters evolving if they’re only having one kind of sex?

As long as this is the case, we have to have the whole spectrum of sexual language available to us. If “globes” are an option, as little as I like it, then “tits” must also be an option, right?

More importantly, if we start to police sexual language like “tits,” we’re making a statement about our readership. I think we already live in a world that underestimates women in general and romance readers in particular. I’d prefer to live and read in a world where each of us can choose the level of protection we need from subject matter, and for choice to be meaningful, options must be plentiful.

A while back, I wrote about the overuse of the word “fuck,” which I still believe is being worn out for shock value. Every day, I still see little snippets of dialogue posted to social media with shallow “dirty talk” between characters I don’t yet know, who therefore lack the ability to shock me. Context matters so much more than one word or another.

So is there a right time and place for “tits”? I sure hope so. If not, I’ll have to start sexualizing other words. I’ve got my eye on “nasolabial” right now. Blame Damian Lewis. I want to get inside those parentheses ever so badly.

Where are we on this? Are “tits” as shocking as I’m making them out to be? Do you dare me to use “nasolabial” three times in the next story? Are there — and should there be — Words We Dare Not Use? Show me the love in the comments.

And follow Lady Smut. Getting dirty’s never been so much fun.

Sexy Saturday Round-Up

Click to buy at Amazon. :)

 

By Liz Everly and the Lady Smut Bloggers.

Hello, Sexy!  Looking for fascinating, fun, and intriguing reading this weekend? Look no further. We’ve got you covered on Lady smut.

From Liz:

Great Bette Davis quotes.

Pat Roberston is afraid gays all make us all want anal sex.

Drawing the line between nasty and kinky.

From Madeline:

France just banned ultra thin models. When will the U.S. follow suit?

From Two Nerdy History girls — A Short History of Undergarments

A make-under for Bratz dolls: the woman who removes make-up from dolls.

The Feds impersonated a woman on fb–endangering her life, and paying her in court, but not saying they won’t do it again.

They say ‘healthy’, I say ‘lesbian derby porn’. Snort! You decide.

 

Stay Hungry,

Liz

 

 

Beards cause problems? Who knew?

Problem: How to describe a character’s beard without sounding like a barber textbook.

This one is for us writer’s to tangle with. As this awesome chart indicates, not all beards are the same. Different lengths, intricate angles, without the inclusion of the mustache, with the inclusion of the mustache… You get the idea.

Let’s say a hot guy character has some nice scruff on his lower jaw but he’s cleaned up the strays on his upper cheeks. Does the writer need to include a high level of detail in that description? Nah. A simple note of the dark shadow or the woman’s desire to run her fingertips across the bristles will take care of it.

But what if the hot guy has a nice mustache and well-trimmed growth over his chin. Many people refer to this simply as a goatee; however, to be accurate goatee refers only to the hair on the chin. So to describe this character accurately, and correctly, the writer would need to say goatee with mustache. Mmmm…that’s kind of distracting. Too many words. Want a shorter option? The correct term for this arrangement is circle beard. Um, yeah. We’re still talking about the same guy, with the same awesome facial hair but using the words ‘circle beard’ kind of throws things off. Want another option? The circle beard is also called a door knocker. Oh. That’s not making things better, is it?

So readers, if you’re ever wondering why you aren’t getting specific details on the hero’s facial hair, or all the guys sound the same with their rough stubble or neatly-trimmed jaw line its because we writers are doing our best to save you from accurate terms such as ducktail, anchor or bandholz.

Another problem: How to kiss a guy with a beard without getting a ‘tash rash.

Here’s where city girls can learn from their country sisters.

Everyone knows the trend of guys having beards–long, short, full, trimmed, totally wild, you name it–came from the country. County dudes have been wearing beards for forever. Don’t believe me? Try watching any movie or television show set in the country. Then compare what you see on the screen to what you see on the city streets. Nuf said, ‘cause there’s your proof. So, it makes sense that country girls have the 411 on dealing with this itchy situation.

Here’s what you do:

Coat your face with lotion before for the smooching starts.

Sound unromantic? No worries. Embrace some hipster irony and use the country cure-all for skin irritations–Bag Balm. Yep. Bag Balm. The stuff that comes in the cute green and red square tin. Yep, with the clovers and cow head on top. Don’t have any on hand? No worries. Just go ask a dairy farmer for some. He’ll have it on hand because what Bag Balm is actually for is treating cow udders after milking. Bonus to rubbing it all over your face before you start locking lips? If you have any stitches the Bag Balm will loosen them up so you can pull them out yourself. Later, of course. There are many other very practical uses for this awesome ointment but you’re getting the idea.

Thinking rubbing your face with cow udder cream all sounds a bit too country? Prefer something more citified?

How about soy milk? Soak a washcloth in soy milk then hold it to your skin for five minutes.  Then apply some aloe. Then hydrocortisone cream. Do that a couple times a day. ‘Cause you have time for that and it’ll make you smell nice and not ruin your makeup at all.

Okay. So maybe you don’t want to layer your face with oily ointment and you don’t have time to lay around with a soy-milk soaked washcloth on your face a couple times a day. Here’s another thing to try: ask your guy to grow his beard longer. Long, like Santa’s. Because kissing Santa would be so hot. If your guy is worried about looking like a hipster or actual bumpkin with his long, Santa beard, suggest you both move out to the country where things such as men with long scraggly beards are commonplace.

No, you won’t be able to get any good sushi but on the bright side your guy, with his new rugged, rowdy beard, will fit right in. And if he decides to trim it later, Bag Balm will be easier to find and coating your face with it before kissing won’t seem odd or awful at all.

So yeah, beards cause problems. But we’re all okay with that.