Best Sex Writing 2010 (16 page)

Perhaps some of this bitter disappointment stems from book four’s departure into adult territory, where Bella becomes a traditional—and boring—teenaged mom. The removal of the couple’s sexual tension reveals two tepid, unenlightened people. Neither character has much to offer outside the initial high school romance storyline: Bella doesn’t have any interesting hobbies, nor is she particularly engaged in the world around her. Her only activity outside her relationship with Edward seems to be cooking dinner for her father. Edward hangs out with his family, but the bulk of his twenty-four hours a day of wakefulness seems to go to either saving Bella from danger or watching her when she sleeps—you know, that age-old savior/stalker duality. Romantic!

As other feminists like Anna N. on
Jezebel.com
have pointed out, Edward is a controlling dick, a fact that becomes abundantly clear in the leaked pages of Meyer’s first draft of
Midnight Sun,
a retelling of
Twilight
from Edward’s perspective. In those pages, available on Meyer’s website, Edward imagines what it would be like to kill Bella. “I would not kill her cruelly,” he thinks to himself. Ever the gentleman, Edward. His icy calculation of how best to kill Bella is horrifying, and it illustrates the disconnect between the two characters.

By extension, readers who interpreted Edward’s reluctance to
be near Bella in
Twilight
as evidence of his innocent “crush” on her are forced to recognize that even Edward—the dream guy—is not all he’s cracked up to be. Digging into Edward’s mind reinforces the old stereotype that underneath it all, even the best guys are calculating vampires, figuring out how to act on their masculine urges. Edward holds all the power, while Bella—and female readers—romanticizes the perfect man who doesn’t exist. It’s no wonder that
Midnight Sun
has not been widely released: it would likely spark even greater fan ire.

Such disappointment suggests something about the desire readers have for abstinence messages; it may also suggest readers’ belief that, pre-sex, Edward and Bella were the perfect couple. In reality, the abstinence message—wrapped in the genre of abstinence porn—objectifies Bella in the same ways that “real” porn might. The
Twilight
books conflate Bella losing her virginity with the loss of other things, including her sense of self and her very life. Such a high-stakes treatment of abstinence reinforces the idea that Bella is powerless, an object—a fact that is highlighted when we get to the sex scenes in
Breaking Dawn.

Of course the paradox is that the more Meyer sexualizes abstinence, the more we want Bella and Edward to actually have sex. This paradox becomes extra-convoluted when we find out, in a moment that for some is titillating, for others creepy, that sex could literally equal death for Bella. In one scene in
Twilight,
Bella asks Edward in a roundabout way if they would ever be able to consummate their relationship. Edward responds, “I don’t think that…that…would be possible for us.” Bella responds, “Because it would be too hard for you, if I were that… close?” Yes, Edward tells her. But more than that he reminds her that she’s “soft” and “so fragile” and “breakable.” “I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by accident.”

And it’s not just Bella’s life that’s at stake—it’s her very humanity. The closer she and Edward get, the more tempting it is for him to bite her and turn her into a vampire, and the conflation of his vampiric and carnal urges is obvious. As
Midnight Sun
reveals, Edward’s bloodlust is every bit as potent as his romantic love. It doesn’t take a Freudian to read Edward’s pulsating, insistent vampire lips pressed against Bella’s pale, innocent neck as an analogy for, well, something else. From clandestine meetings in Bella’s bedroom to time spent in a forest clearing, Edward almost always has his lips on Bella’s neck—a dangerous activity, as we learn in
Twilight
that “the perfume of [Bella’s] skin” is an unbearably erotic and tempting scent for Edward. When they do kiss, Bella often loses control of herself, which means Edward must be ever-vigilant in controlling “his need.” After their first kiss, Bella asks if she should give him some room. “No,” he tells her, “it’s tolerable.” He goes on, “I’m stronger than I thought.” Bella responds, “I wish I could say the same. I’m sorry.”

Fan fiction reveals fans’ tacit understanding of the serious dangers of sex and the excitement of it, illustrating that readers have picked up on Meyer’s analogy where the sexual penetration of Bella’s human body is akin to the vampiric penetration of Bella’s skin. One piece of fan fiction was posted to
TheTwilightSaga.com
on June 22, 2008, before the release of the fourth book, by a particularly ardent fan (hardy’sgirl). In the story, Edward and Bella have gotten married and are on their honeymoon. Edward begins kissing Bella (on her neck, of course), and then begins removing her jeans. Bella, with a pounding heart, asks herself, “Would I really let him go all the way?” Keep in mind that within this story, Bella and Edward are married; waffling about “doing it” with your husband might point to the age and maturity of the writer, but it also taps into the fear of intimacy that Meyer establishes in
the books. The fan writer picks up on that fear as she continues her story: as Edward becomes more sexually aroused, he turns into something Bella doesn’t recognize, and she begins to fight him. The fan writes:

The rape fantasy is apparent, of course, but even more salient is the fan writer’s subconscious understanding of the theme Meyer has been establishing: that sex is dangerous and men must control themselves. It’s a matter of life or death, and ultimately men are in charge.

It’s clear from both the books and the fan fiction response to them that Edward has taken on the role of protector of Bella’s human blood and chastity, both of which, ironically, are always in peril when Edward is nearby. Bella is not in control of her body, as abstinence proponents would argue; she is absolutely dependent on Edward’s ability to protect her life, her virginity, and her humanity. She is the object of his virtue, the means of his ability to prove his self-control. In other words, Bella is a secondary player in the drama of Edward’s abstinence.

Reader Shimmerskin again astutely notes, “…it’s so clever that these books aren’t just about sexual abstinence. Edward is fighting two kinds of lust at the same time. Abstaining from human blood has probably been good practice for tamping down his sexual appetites now that he’s with Bella.…”

It’s arguably clever, sure, but it’s also a sad commentary on Bella’s lack of power. Ultimately, it’s a statement of the sexual politics of Meyer’s abstinence message: whether you end up doing the nasty or not doesn’t ultimately matter. When it comes to a woman’s virtue, sex, identity, or her existence itself, it’s all in the man’s hands. To be the object of desire in abstinence porn is not really so far from being the object of desire in actual porn.

 

 

The man—or perhaps woman—dressed all in black and wearing a disturbingly realistic leather horse’s head sits apparently despondent (given the mask, it’s hard to tell, but his or her body is slumped) on a bench across from the stage where three bare-breasted women with candles taped to their nipples pose holding… are they dildos? The lighting is dim, and they are obscured by naked and half-naked dancing bodies. Through a doorway in the cavernous club—Passive Arts Studios near LAX in Los Angeles—Larry, a well-known actor, can see a man dressed like Johnny Depp in
Pirates of the Caribbean
using an Indiana Jones bullwhip on a spread-eagled naked woman. When Larry maneuvers through the crowd of perhaps two hundred at the annual DomCon—Domination Convention—Fetish Ball, he glimpses your average six-and-a half-foot-tall transvestite dominatrix, as well as a bent-over young man being sodomized
by a woman wielding a butt plug the size of a sawed-off Louisville Slugger.

A guy in his midseventies—clearly the oldest in the group—in full leather regalia, handcuffs at his belt, whip under his arm, rocks his walker toward the unisex bathroom. “Bet he’s seen some things in his time,” says a woman in a leather thong with studs through her nipples.

“You mean weirder than this?” asks a man in black slacks and a blue blazer. “You have no idea,” the woman says, grinning, and sashays away, headed into the labyrinth of rooms in the back of the club. Two of the orgiasts who have joined Larry at the Fetish Ball come out of the bathroom. Betty, a blonde, and Veronica, a brunette, each take one of Larry’s arms. Veronica’s husband, Reggie, lags behind, scoping out a woman in a catsuit.

“Can you believe,” says Betty, “someone in the bathroom line told us we didn’t look like we belonged here?”

Both women are dressed for an evening at the Bar Marmont (casual cocktail dresses), though Veronica may pass muster at the Fetish Ball since she is wearing a long, not quite translucent white gown with nothing underneath.

But it isn’t really their scene.

“No one’s having any orgasms,” Veronica says. Larry takes a last look around the club and heads for the door, following Betty, Veronica and Reggie, who consider themselves a sexual trio. Betty comes to L.A. most weekends to play with Veronica and Reggie. In the past few months, Larry has been involved in orgies with both Betty and Veronica, who are part of a vast sexual underground that’s different from the erotic underground of the 1970s and 1980s, the era of Plato’s Retreat and Sandstone. It’s different in great part because of the influence of the Internet,
which makes meeting easier and offers a larger pool of potential playmates.

On the way out, Larry, Betty, Veronica and Reggie pass the smorgasbord, which is serving, among other dishes, meatballs in sauce. “If there’s a smorgasbord,” a friend told Larry, “eat only prewrapped sandwiches—and avoid the mayonnaise.”

A few months earlier, just before Christmas, at about 11:30 on a rainy winter Friday night in Los Angeles, Larry, in sweats and a T-shirt, got a phone call from Mercedes, a dancer he had recently met at a music-video shoot.

“What are you doing?” Mercedes asked.

“Nothing,” Larry said. He’d just gotten home from a long day of working on a TV show. “You?”

“I’m at the Velvet Margarita,” Mercedes said. “Can I come over? ”

“Sure,” Larry said. Why not?

They had dated a few times. Successfully. “She’s very sexual,” Larry says about Mercedes. “She’s ‘All I want to do is fuck you. I don’t want to cuddle. I don’t want a boyfriend.’ She has a boyfriend”—a minor celebrity—“and she’s involved in a culture that is very sexually open.” Larry grins. “Incredibly sexually open. Completely sexually open.”

Mercedes is part of the Los Angeles Lifestyle, or swingers, scene. For her business she travels frequently and widely. She has contacts in the Lifestyle in most major cities. It’s like being a member of a lodge, the Masons or the Elks: no matter where you go, all you have to do is signal your insider status and you’re at home. If she visits a city where she doesn’t know anyone, she can go on the Internet site she prefers,
LifestyleLounge.com
, and hook up with people who are into her scene: moderately kinky heterosexual and lesbian encounters.

Larry thought a night with Mercedes would be an uncomplicated way to unwind. Uncomplicated?

Larry had no idea what he was in for. “It was pouring rain,” Larry says. “One of those five times a year it rains in L.A. A torrential downpour.”

Larry lives in the hills, with a lot of cement steps leading up to his front door. He heard
clack clack clack
…the sound of one… two… three sets of high heels approaching his place. Mercedes couldn’t get the front door open. “Larry,” Mercedes explains, “is an obsessive door locker.”

The worst rainstorm of the year. Mercedes pounded on the door. When Larry finally opened it, he saw Mercedes drenched, her blonde hair wet and pasted to her forehead and cheeks, in a black trench coat. With another beautiful woman, Betty, also drenched, in a black trench coat and high heels. And a beautiful Asian woman, Kathy, also drenched, in a black trench coat and high heels. Their hair, before it was soaked, had been done up so they all looked like librarians. Larry said, “Hi, hi, hi. Whatever is going on here?”

The three women came into his foyer, each pulling a rolling suitcase containing whatever she thought might come in handy during the night. “Everyone came with her own toys,” Larry explains. “Vibrators, dildos, this little vibrating handy thing. I don’t know what it was. It looks like a computer mouse.” The Mouse, the Butterfly, the Rabbit, the Penguin—vibrators come with names that make them seem as innocuous as Disney cartoon characters.

Larry offered to take their coats.

“He was trying to be a gentleman,” Mercedes explains.

She, Betty and Kathy got the giggles. They knew what the coats covered: underneath they were wearing nothing but
lingerie. Larry says, “I was like, Why, I never! I do declare!”

But, Larry says, “I knew exactly what was going to happen.” He grins. “Dreams do come true.”

“Larry didn’t miss a beat,” Mercedes recalls.

His face registered no shock. No surprise. “What did Bear Bryant say about scoring a touchdown?” Larry says. “Act like you’ve been there before.”

Mercedes and her friends looked, Mercedes says, “like drowned rats. It wasn’t sexy at all.”

Larry disagrees.

At dinner, before Mercedes called Larry, she had suggested to her two girlfriends that they surprise him with a spontaneous foursome. She told Betty and Kathy, “Let’s ruin his life. We’re going to ruin his life because once someone has a taste for this it’s hard to go back.”