TITLE    : Catalogue of Desire Pt. 01
STORYID  : catalogue-of-desire-pt-01
SUMMARY  : What do Literotica's "Stories By Categories" say about us?
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2009-12-10
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |erotica|sociology|gender|shemale|fiction|culture|


Literotica's table of contents, or list of "Stories By Category," represents, as its title suggests, a classification of erotica, or of such erotica, at any rate, as that which the website features. A casual glance at the categories suggests the rich variety of sexual behavior in which men and women engage. The nature of these categories also suggests something about the nature of the human beings who consume such material (which is to say, everyone).



In this essay, I touch briefly upon the categories of Literotica's contents that interest me, either personally or intellectually, skipping those which either don't appeal to me or about which I lack the requisite knowledge, experience, or skill to write. There are many categories of desire, so, most likely, a second, if not a third, installment of my article will be necessary to accomplish my goal.



Anal intercourse offers an alternative to vaginal intercourse--an alternative in which male and female couples, male couples, female couples, or shemale couples can engage, so it's an equal opportunity employer, so to speak. In addition, since the anus is much smaller than the vagina, anal intercourse also offers a tighter fuck, which enhances the sexual experience. Moreover, anal intercourse is free of the risk of unwanted pregnancy, since the rectum, male, female, or shemale, harbors no pesky eggs waiting to ambush a man's happy-go-lucky sperm. Finally, there is, even today, following the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s, a forbidden element and, therefore, a mystique, about anal intercourse that tends to cause men and women to want to give the tabooed practice a try. In the process, many are hooked, as it were, on it, some coming even to prefer it to vaginal intercourse.



BDSM is about taking and relinquishing personal power; it's about dominance and submission, as is much of life itself. There is a deep-seated (in my opinion, biological) need for dominance and submission in all human beings. Usually, the more powerful are driven toward dominance, the less powerful toward submission. The tendency to be in control or to be controlled is necessary to both human survival and human society, and we see this dynamic exercised in every sphere of human endeavor, not just in politics. Courtship is merely a more sophisticated, ritualized means of asserting or surrendering one's will (as is anal intercourse between men, I argue, in my "Thoughts on Sodomy").



Celebrities represent our own hopes, writ larger than life, in divine figures who live the luxurious and liberated sort of lives about which the rest of us can only dream. As such, we put ourselves in their places, living, if only in our imaginations and for just a time, idealized versions of what we imagine the lives of the rich and famous may be like. Alternatively, we like to see celebrities degraded. Those who occupy pedestals often do so only so that the spectacle of their fall from such positions of lofty grace can entertain us lesser mortals. Stories that involve celebrities let us either imagine their privileged (sex) lives or allow us to delight in their (sexual) woes. (Jennifer Love Hewitt once lamented that she was "exhausted from living the sex life the media" had given her.)



We all want to be wanted--or, at least, to be the center of attention. As young children, we demand that our parents "watch me!" Naïve, we are honest enough to admit that we want all our eyes upon us; when they aren't, we demand that they be. Somewhere along the way to adulthood, we learn that the universe does not revolve around us, after all. We are mortal creatures, doomed to die, and, even while we are alive, we are merely one among millions of others, of relatively little significance. Exhibitionism, however, attracts attention. Exposing oneself, whether partially or completely, makes one the center of attention, provided, of course, that the right parts of the person are exhibited.



If exhibiting oneself makes a man or a woman the center of attention, looking--in secret--empowers the voyeur. He (most voyeurs are men, at least officially) is invisible; therefore, he is all powerful. Watching from concealment or from a distance, through binoculars, the zoom lens of a camera, or even a telescope, the voyeur is like a god. He violates the privacy and the dignity of the observed with impunity (unless, of course, he's caught), making of the woman (or man) upon whom he spies a thing more than a person, an object whose existence is meant only for his pleasure, only for his gaze.



Exhibitionism, like group sex, also defies the notion (and, often, the legal requirement) that there is a separation between the private and the public aspects of life. Some things (usually the less important ones from a sociopolitical perspective) that are permitted in private are forbidden in public, and vice versa. Nudity is usually reserved for private times; displaying one's breasts, buttocks, or sex organs in public is a violation of such a prohibition and is, therefore, with such exceptions as nudity during breastfeeding or at clothing-optional beaches, usually punishable under the law. By flaunting such prohibitions, the exhibitionist puts him- or herself above the law (unless he or she is caught) and becomes, as it were, a god or a goddess. 



For scholars and scientists alike, if not for ordinary folk, homosexuality (especially, it seems, male homosexuality) is a mystery. It is an enigma. Whether one is for or against (or neutral about) heterosexuality, sex between a man and a woman seems clearly to have a purpose: the continuation of the human species through procreation. Sex between two men or two women may be fun and rewarding on other levels, but, just as clearly, it is not procreative. Several theories have been advanced to "explain" homosexual behavior (I advance one of my own in "Thoughts on Sodomy"). Some thinkers see such sex as promoting emotional and social bonding between same-sex lovers. Others, taking a hedonistic view of the matter, regard homosexuality as a means of increasing bisexuals' pleasure base; as Woody Allen observes, being bisexual automatically increases one's "chance for a date on Saturday night." Still others believe that homosexuality results from socialization gone awry or is genetically determined.



In any event, as long as it is regarded as a problem of sorts, homosexuality will remain something of an enigma. Therein lies its attraction to those who are "curious" about same-sex sex. Although a man or a woman might not be willing to try sex with another man or another woman, those who are "curious" about what it is like to do so will likely be attracted to gay and lesbian stories such as those that are featured on Literotica. Those who, like me (and Sigmund Freud), regard people as being pansexual--that is, sexually attracted, in reality or in principle, to almost anything, animate, live, or even dead--see less of a mystery to homosexuality than others who regard the male-female, masculine-feminine dynamics to be fixed and immutable (except among perverts).



Nevertheless, such stories are appealing because they depict "different" sex, sex between same-sex lovers, which, because unusual or atypical, is intriguing. The element of the forbidden makes gay and lesbian fiction appealing, but such narratives are also appealing for the same reasons that any other erotic tale is appealing: they show us human behavior, warts and all, up close and personal, allowing us, as voyeurs, to observe the interpersonal and social dynamics of dominance and submission, control and surrender, love and desire, courtship and conquest. Besides, on a strictly aesthetic level, one man's cock down another man's throat or up another man's ass (or one woman's tongue in another woman's twat or one woman's strap-on dildo in another woman's bottom or pussy) looks just as sexy as heterosexual anal, oral, or vaginal intercourse.



For aficionados of group sex, or orgies, the more, the merrier. Group sex, whether it involves three or more participants, is a controlled form of anarchy in which sexual mores, representative, perhaps, of society's rules and regulations in general, are cast off in a Dionysian celebration of instinct and desire. For a time, here and now, social restraints can be cast off in favor of an abandonment to one's most primal impulses. Anyone, male or female, friend or stranger, young or old, can be had. Individuality and personality are abandoned in an immersion not in the group per se, but in a sea of lips and tongues and mouths, of breasts and nipples, of labia and clitorises and vaginas, of penises and scrota and testicles, of buttocks and anuses and rectums. In an anarchical embrace of the flesh, the soul is delivered to sensation and emotion, becoming, ironically, detached and incorporeal, a consciousness disembodied in the experience of flesh and sex for their own sake, with anyone and everyone at hand.



I will take up my thoughts concerning other categories of desire in subsequent installments of this series. However, in my consideration of anal intercourse, BDSM, celebrity sex, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and gay and lesbian sex, I discern a few general statements that seem worth mentioning concerning human nature as it is revealed by men's and women's sexual interests and behaviors. People want variety, and sexual practices that provide alternatives to penile-vaginal intercourse remain attractive to many, not only as a means of increasing opportunities for sexual pleasure and same-sex bonding and as a symbolic means of enacting a ritualistic expression of psychological, physical, and sexual dominance and submission, but also as a means of violating social and cultural taboos, religious, legal, and otherwise; as a means of asserting one's power over another or others; or as a means of revolving the universe about oneself as the center of attention. People are far too complex, psychologically, socially, sexually, and otherwise, to fit the neat pigeonholes of "male," "female," "masculine," and "feminine" and to serve the roles associated with such sex and gender identities and assignments.



It is my opinion that everyone is both male and female, masculine and feminine, dominant and submissive, gay and straight, voyeuristic and exhibitionistic, famous (if only in his or her imagination) and anonymous, public and private; we all fit somewhere or another along a sliding continuum between the polarities of sexual identity and role playing ("male" or "female," "masculine" or "feminine") that society and culture traditionally posit and allow. We are protean in our sexuality, pansexual in our behavior, and polymorphous perverse in our orientations. However, society, perhaps wisely, prohibits some activities while allowing others. Some prohibitions against sexual behaviors are legal ones, others unwritten. At the same time, however, society allows, in a more or less discreet and problematic manner, erotica as a means of citizens' satisfying those of their interests that deviate from the established norm or are forbidden or taboo. Therefore, erotica, providing outlets for the pursuit of such desires, serves an important social and individual function. At the same time, in doing so (and just by virtue of its existence), erotica also suggests a truth that is often publicly rejected: human beings are pansexual creatures who are motivated by lawless and untamable impulses that must, and will, find expression in one way or another.

