Writing About Touch (The Senses, Part 5)

Sensuality is critical in erotica, but what does sensuality really mean? For most readers, when it comes to erotica, it means touch. I left off talking about touch until late in my series on “the senses” because it’s the sense that most people think about when thinking about erotic fiction.

It’s also the most difficult for me to write about, believe it or not. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to it.

All erotica is about people touching. Sometimes it might be about people touching themselves. Sometimes the touch might not be physical — for instance, an erotic story about a man watching a stripper onstage could be hugely erotic. You need look no further than the film Tom Jones to see a complete sexual activity involving nothing but eating. In some cases (say, chastity or tease-and-denial erotica) the refusal of the physical touch takes on an emotional-erotic meaning, but even when it’s not touching it’s still about touching.

So how does the erotic writer describe touch? I’ve always struggled with this. We’re a largely body-negative culture — while still being totally obsessed with the body. We have lots of language for visual stimuli, for sounds, even for smells. Body talk is a little bit taboo.

That means that describing physical experience within the body — as opposed to action or activity — can be more difficult than describing things experienced with other senses.

Let me back up here — because I think there’s an important point to be made before we talk about “how to do it.” Above, I’ve been talking in absolutes — I’ve been saying “how does the erotic writer describe touch” and “we have a visual language.” I’ve been talking in generalities — including the whole universe of humanity in my bold statements.

That’s probably because it’s easier to be God than to be a person — why else would anyone want to be a writer?

So maybe a better way to think about describing touch in my erotic writing is this: Why is it useful?

Describing touch is useful in my erotic writing for basically the same reason it’s useful in any of my other kinds of writing — horror, science fiction, crime:

• When I write about how something feels physically, I place myself mentally in the body of the character feeling it.
• When the reader reads about how something feels physically — if that writing works — then the reader is mentally in the body of the character feeling it.

When the reader is within the character’s experience as wholly as possible, they are getting what they came for.

I like to think about it this way — people don’t arrive at my writing because they want me to tell them a story. They don’t even — to use an old-school journalism dichotomy — want me to show them a story. They want to be in my story. They want to experience it. That’s why I write — not because I have something I want to say, but because I want to get the fuck out of my own head. How weird is it that I use something as brain-centric as writing to get myself in my body — or, more accurately, in someone else’s body? But that’s the way I experience most wholly — when I’m transported, utterly.

Joseph Campbell put it the best I’ve ever heard anyone put it. He wasn’t talking about writing, but religious experience. But it’s just as brilliant a statement on storytelling:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That’s what it’s all finally about, and that’s what these clues help us to find within ourselves.”

–Joseph Campbell

I’d go so far as to say that if Campbell’s comment was on religious experience, which in its cheapest form (in my opinion) looks for a meaning for life, then it’s worth transferring the same observation to the context of writing: They say what people are looking for is the meaning of your book — what is it about — but but what they’re looking for in your book is the experience of being alive. What does it feel like to be there?

In erotica, more than in any other kind of fiction, the experience of being touched and of touching — things as well as people — is critical to that transformation of reader into experiencer.

Focusing on touch can be a fantastic way of bringing the reader into the moment. But I find my language for how bodies feel is too often insufficient. I struggle to find the words to describe the physical sensation of an erotic experience. I find myself using the same words over and over again…which is fine; if the words work, use them. But often I hit the thesaurus or go to wordlists and other peoples’ blog posts to find words for a physical-touch experience that I just can’t describe, even though I’ve imagined it concretely.

I’m trying to translate an imagined sensation into words so that it can be translated back into the same imagined sensation in a reader’s mind.

I mean…WTF? Is that bass-ackwards or what? And what is this “language is insufficient” shit? Who am I, Jodi Foster in Contact?

Nine times out of ten, I struggle to find that physical experience within myself to describe it. But then, maybe 10% of the time, it just comes rolling out — and then, the words are beautiful, the writing effortless. I wish it could be that way more often.

But for me, it’s worth writing 9 stories to find the one that really transforms me through physical experience.

If describing touch isn’t easy for me, my guess is it isn’t easy for you. And if it is easy for you — you’re a very lucky writer. I believe that firsthand physical experience is the primary thing readers of erotica are seeking. They may rarely get it, and may satisfy themselves with a lot of other things, which may be very satisfying. But I believe the most complete and intense reading experience comes from being completely in the moment within a story, an experience that can most effectively be brought about by depictions of touch.