Sex.

(Yeah, that’ll fetch ya.)

A while back, I was on the radio and got mistaken for Russell Smith. In case you don’t remember, or did not care in the slightest even at the time, Russell Smith is a Canadian bloke who wrote a book under a female pseudonym and submitted it – he says in ignorance, and I know of no reason to doubt him – to a publishing house which only takes books from women. He withdrew the book when they asked for gender verification, which is what they always do in the course of contractual negotiations.

This passage provoked a small but noisy storm of boy-girl griping, all of which no doubt pimped his book and the books of the eroteuses who assailed it, and got a lot of people some additional filthy reading. I am therefore hugely in favour of the discussion, since more people reading more dirty books is a prospect I look on with considerable delight.

However…

A canard came up. (I love that word: canaaaaard! As in “You lie, sir! It is a filthy canaaaaard!” Which, indeed, rhymes with another of my favourite words: “Baudrillard”. By the way, if you’re like me and now wondering why the French word for a duck should also mean an outrageous lie, the answer apparently is that there’s an old expression in France meaning “to half-sell a duck”. Since you can’t half-sell a duck, this is slang for a con-trick. There’s also a verb form which means “to fly abroad as a false report”. I love English. Specifically, I love the OED.)

The canaaaard was that women don’t write well about sex. It’s sheerest poppycock, so I won’t even bother to dignify it by talking about the women who transparently do write well about sex, because that somehow suggests they might be a small group. What is true, though, is that some writers do not write well about sex.

In fact, there’s even a prize for not writing well about sex. (Oh, look, lots of men have won it.)

For myself, I dislike the far ends of the spectrum of erotic language. I’m equally ill at ease with throbbing rods and trembling rose-petal gardens. I tend to think that if you’re going to write about sex, you have to find a way to do it which is both explicit and unembarrassing; unabashed and dirty, yet not laughably biological nor primly metaphorical. In other words, it’s a very fine line to walk. I suspect you also need plenty of foreplay for a big bonk scene – unless your book is one, long sexual obstacle course, in which case your reader is probably primed to accept some filth right off the top. (Oh, dear. This is going to get innuendish, isn’t it?)

You can’t just jump in and start heaving away.

Your audience has to be flirted with, stroked, and made to anticipate the, er, big entry. It has to feel as if you’ve danced with them, then taken them back to your place and allowed your hand to make contact with, say, the small of their backs. You may even have to show them a bit of leg.

Because otherwise it’s just like some alarming lush putting an arm around them and saying something about gearsticks or moistness.

Ew.