On the Absence of Smex

I don’t write sex scenes. Very nearly every gay romance I’ve read has sex scenes, some more explicit than others, but mine don’t.

Why? Because sex scenes bore me.

The truth is that when I’m reading, I skip the sexy bits. I just start flipping forward. They’re still doing it? Flip, flip…oh look, they’ve changed positions, flip…looks like we’re wrapping it up, flip…aaaand we’re having a chat. I start reading again.

Unless something untoward happens—a limp wienie, an outraged husband, and both of those are really tired clichés and I’m not going to read/write those either—I know at the beginning how the scene is going to end. No matter how inventive the contestants are, it's still pretty much same-old-same-old. I don’t need the greasy details.

Which is why, in my own work, I dim the lights and discreetly end the chapter before anybody fumbles for that drawer in the nightstand.

The only time a sex scene has meaning, it seems to me, is when one or both parties are there for reasons outside of the usual love/lust. I can imagine that revenge sex, mercy sex, distraction sex, negotiating sex, could all have dramatic weight and development. Otherwise? Flip, flip.

I just don’t care who’s the vase and who’s the flowers.

c.t.h.