A word to think about (but maybe not use a lot)

There’s a word that seems fairly obvious for me to use when talking about this book in the marketing of it, that I haven’t been using. (As a self-publisher I get to decide how this book is marketed, from tweets to tags, and the omission of the word has been deliberate yes, but not due to a rule that I’ve written down. I don’t mind if other people use it when talking about the book, but I want to think about what I mean when I say it.)

“Virgin” appears only once in the entire book.

The book is about a main character (the “forty-one year old virgin”) asking an old friend who has had more sexual experience to be her first partner. If you’ve been reading my books, you might know this but here I am confirming it — I very rarely write about first-time sex. Of the more than 20 stories I’ve written where the characters have sex, only 2 depict someone’s “first time.”

I very rarely write “virgins” (who eventually have sex in the story).

It’s recorded in one of the Kilig Cafe Twitch livestreams, the moment when I realized that I was writing First Time for Everything without actually using “virginity” or other words that we usually see with depicting first-time sex. I took note of it and then continued writing it, without changing the way I was going to not include those words, but I knew I was going to have to write this post eventually and explain why.

One of the ways that I think I contribute to the world of stories, as a Filipino romance writer, is the depiction of Filipinos who actually have sex. I was lucky to have had a book published where this perspective was respected and supported, not toned down or edited out, and then encouraged further by having readers get in touch with me and say they loved it.

I could write a paper about how most stories that include sex and Filipino characters are absolutely Not For Me. There’s so much judgment and punishment and guilt, often wrapped in marketing that makes one think finally these desires are explored without all of it. Often that’s in the marketing and the first and second acts in the story. The third act is when it all comes down to ruin and shame.

I don’t/won’t do that and that entails a lot of thinking about the words that are used to take us in thinking that the story is for us, and maybe not using those words.

Or maybe using them once just so we’re clear and then moving on.

This is an ongoing (maybe career-long) conversation for me, for us. Thank you for participating.

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