Writing and Erotica

There are no pictures of mountains or fields on my wall calendar. I tear off the months as they pass, crumble and throw them in the metal trash can under my desk. Each month I hope to discover a book in my fingertips─I rotate my hands so my palms face up, close my eyes, and rub the soft edges of my fingers. Then I place my hands on my Smith Corona the way a musician’s hands light on piano keys. Some musicians set their hands in place and music just flows. Not me. With Mme. Deslandres I practised right hand, left hand, sang notes, bar by bar. I write the same way. I’m hungry all the time. Words gnaw at me. I want I want I want. More than sex, more than love. When I was twenty, I was obsessed with acting and fame. Now when Abie calls me to watch a play on TV, he brings chips in a bowl for himself and a box of Kleenex for me. I walked out on the love of my life and I’ve never recovered.

The day before my wedding, I threw out all my pre-Abie writing─laboured poems, diaries chronicling love and hate and nothing in between, letters written to boyfriends and never mailed─I figured I should start fresh. These days I write erotic poetry inspired by midnight solitary sessions on a cold bathroom floor and sometimes I write about Abie when I’m angry at him and even when I’m not (mostly I am). I read both to him. “Write a Harlequin,” he says, “how hard can it be?” But you see, there are good writers and nice writers although I can never remember which is which. Erotic poems are just an easy lay, and like me, my short stories are all dressed up and raring to go with no idea of where they’re headed. And besides, I’m not good at making up stories. Lying is one thing; fiction is another.



My mother keeps her clothes in three walk-in closets. She inserts shoes trees and tissue paper in the toes of her shoes to keep their shape. Her stockings are rolled into clear plastic bags, striped hat boxes arranged in a row on the shelf above her quilted garment bags. Everything is labelled. Every time she looks at her writing, she makes plans to take a course in calligraphy, and she really means it. But then she gets depressed, sometimes for four months on end and then one morning CBC FM streams from her room on the top floor as she sets aside clothes for different seasons, sifts through her cedar chest, places mothballs in the feet of old nylon stockings─she works and pauses, each article reminding her of a certain time or episode or lost wish. And that’s how I am with my writing, some handwritten on papers lined and unlined, typed on sheets, scribbled in notepads. They’re my photo albums, I guess.

“I like to write erotica,” I say one morning while Abie’s cooking up our Saturday breakfast of bacon and eggs, and I’m buttering four slices of my homemade rye.
“It’s no wonder. You were raised on a diet of communist propaganda and pornography.”
“See, but I want it to be more. Like my writing about our life. I want to write about Clearwater and marriage and chasing Pluto through the cornfield. And how you love to eat,” I say as he turns over the bacon and reaches over for another slice of bread.
“I am a sensualist,” he says. “You have to eat to live, might as well enjoy. If you knew the meaning of geschmuck─”
I say “I know what it means,” and he challenges me. “Oh yeah?” he says. “It means tasty. Like enjoy your geschmucked breakfast,” I say and leave the room.
“That’s it,” he calls after me. “Walk away.”

I sit crouched and waiting in the turquoise armchair by the picture window. He walks over to me with a plate full of eggs and bacon, two slices of bread, and an unpeeled navel orange.
“Here,” he says. “Have some geschmucked food.”
“Thank you,” I say and take the plate from him.
“See?” he says and wipes my eyes with his t-shirt.”
“You don’t take me seriously,” I say.
“Don’t be silly, of course I take you seriously.”
“You do?”
“You’re going to be a great writer. Up there with Anais Nin.”
“Sure sure,” I say, “but do you think it’ll be interesting?”
“I find it interesting.”
“But you’re my husband. I want to know whether it’ll sell.”
“Sex always sells.”
“And how will I work in dialogue? There has to be dialogue,” I say.
“Don’t worry so much. You’ll find a way.”
“And it has to be meaningful.”
“Sounds like sex. Come on, I’ll give you some content.”
“But will it be geschmucked? See, that’s it. That’s what I want. I want my writing to be geschmucked. I want to write words that will be relished.”
He puts my plate on the coffee table and pulls me up to him.
“So you really think I’m a writer?” I say.