Toward Sexual Realism
Toward Sexual Realism, or the Night William Dean Howells Kissed Me
By Decker Peters
William Dean Howells, circa 1915
Combining the characteristics of blogging with Scott McCloud’s idea of the infinite canvas, this digi-page will host a progressively written statement of my approach to gay erotic fiction, which moves out from the premise of sexual realism. These notes will serve as a general rationale for the writing you find on this site. These notes will assert the central impulse behind why and what I write when it comes to fiction.
In Criticism and Fiction (1891), William Dean Howells, the “father” of American Realism, explored what was becoming a central concern within the literary studies of his time: “The question of a final criterion for the appreciation of art [as] one that perpetually recurs to those interested in any sort of aesthetic endeavor.” One might pose the same question for reading erotica, really anything today, in our era where the update button has replaced the publisher’ s press. Within Howell’s effort, I find a rationale for writing gay erotic fiction. As a matter of fact, I find within Howell’s discussion a criterion for reading erotic narratives generally. That said, my specific interest is to riff on Howell’s famous call to American realism to express the sense of sexual realism that governs my fiction.
Howells opens by referencing John Addington Symonds:
[Symonds] seeks to determine whether there can be an enduring [literary] criterion or not: “Our hope,” [Symonds] says, “[is that] we shall come to comprehend with more instinctive certitude what is simple, natural, and honest, welcoming with gladness all artistic products that exhibit these qualities [and be] able to test the excellence of work in any stage from immaturity to decadence by discerning what there is of truth, sincerity, and natural vigor in it.”
Moving out from this discernment, I argue erotic fiction holds the potential to express humanity’s most simple, natural, honest, and I would add sincere, truths. This truthiness stems from our hard-ons, and their potential for truth has already been noted by Susie Bright. In her provocative book Full Exposure (2000), Bright asserts: “Sex is one of the few honest places inside us: it doesn’t know how to lie, even if we change the story for the public” (10). Indeed, for even if the word or deed that follows our sexual response is a lie, this lie is secondary to the already-constituted truth of our erections. Herein we find the sexual subtext of our social pretense. So, we might speak of the truthiness of erotic fiction, and I will offer a word for doing so.
Here, I open myself up to an easy charge of phallocentrism, which in simple terms translates to being male. However, I prefer not to care for I speak of erect clits as well as cocks here. That said, we might speak of the erectness of erotic fiction. I am Derri-guilty when it comes to having a preference for up, but one imagines Derrida was in the end buried face up. One hears Shania Twain singing up, up, up at moments like this.
I admit a preference for up as this location connotes everything from the Aristotelian ladder, the location of the gods, the origin of light, and the sense of progress. However, I also use the word erectness as it additionally connotes the physiological condition of being rigid or stiff, which returns us to the fact of our erections.
I also prefer this word for its archaic connotation of being wide-awake or alert. I find much contemporary relevance and resonance in this older meaning of the word. This word also feels apt as it invokes the idea of construction–one might erect a Gothic cathedral or a skyscraper. This meaning speaks to the simple idea of productivity. As these notes are an effort to express something about what and why I write what I do, I find this word choice to be very apt. All said, we might speak of the erectness of erotic fiction. This is sexual realism.
To establish his final criterion for literature, Howells’ uses Symonds three-part imperative to “test the excellence” of literary narratives and to frame a call for realism. Howell’s development of a test is not about absolute “truth.” Instead, it is more an effort to develop a gauge for the productivity of fiction as one might consider its sincerity, vigor, simplicity, honesty, and, yes, that problematic word naturalness. This imperative informs my approach to erotic fiction generally.
I specifically find this approach helpful when it comes to the question of gay erotica today. The internet has become populated with “gay” erotic content that is stuck within a familiar mid-twentieth century double-bind. This popular culture complication emerged when hetero-male and homo-female readers came to (not so ironically) form the the same reading community for lesbian pulp fiction. Yet, there was also an important difference that divided this larger reading community into two. This difference comes down to use-value, where the erotic word serves sexually versus surpassing this goal by standing for something social.
This is the raison d’etre I find in Howell’s call to realism. This is sexual realism, and it maybe understood as the difference between appropriation and agency in erotic writing. The question is simple: does the erotic word get you off or does it turn you on? This is the durable sense of wonder that spurs me to write erotica that explores something of the gay male experience not as we want–or need–to see him fuck but to see something of him before, during, or after the fucking.
This approach resists seeing the gay male in terms of his erections in favor of reading his erections. In other words, the sense behind the hard on and not just the idealism of it. While I have no problem with stroke fiction or whatever else, this is the sense of sexual realism I strive for in my writing.
Does this mean that I think I capture the truth and reality of every gay man throughout all times, places, and positions when I write of him in a story? Does this mean I think I speak as a gay man for all gay men? Of course not, the irruption of postmodernism has placed the last nail in the coffin of that all too easy humanist assumption. Instead, sexual realism is the earnest effort to write something of the experience of skin and not the just feel of it. Whether my fiction is successful at this is another question.
All in all, within this, there is an ages old question for the artist, and it comes down to the question of agency versus appropriation for an author: why do you write and what are you doing with your words? This is also the difference between mere consumption as in popular culture and the appreciation of something like art. It is perhaps fine to operate on either side of this consideration, but the question here is one of intentionality and an honest accounting of such.
Toward sexual realism, I progress three ways: reflective, romantic, and randy. The first strives for thinking, the second for feeling, and the third, well, that one probably speaks for itself. While any point of the triangle can serve a starting point, I find their interplay turns the sex story into an erotic narrative. The first narrative mode turns on the body, but the second turns the mind on as well.
In addition to sexual realism as a writer’s impulse, there is also the matter of the authorial position behind the pen. Decker is real-gay and real-author. Decker’s got pen(is). If I write it, I have access to it from skin or breath, and if it is on this site, I wrote it. There’s no Wiki-knowledge or ghost authors here. After all, I prefer it real and one-on-one. If you’re getting erect, I wanna be the one typing the words that take you up.
Hi Decker: here’s a brief quote from my novel about this (Ch 36, Rapture):”The idea is to have a nap, as I said, and the a/c is articulate, and the idea is to have a nap and forget about Alex and everything. You realize what’s going to happen next. I’m lying there, and lying there on my bed, and masturbate, all the while eating a rotten tomato that I brought from the kitchen because I need to motivate the next line (“you call it pornography, I call it new realism”).”
Greetings, Michael
Yes, indeed, there seems to be a few intersects between our experiences and exploration in writing. Thanks for sharing this-Decker