Fucking Law

This erotic story excerpt by Victoria Brooks from Fucking Law: the search for her sexual ethics was originally published by Zero Books and is a finalist in the Good Sex Awards Best Thought Leadership Category. Show it some love and vote for this story in the Readers' Choice awards by 20 June.

Best Thought Leadership
Good Sex Awards Thought Leadership

Orgasms

She knew several things about orgasms. She knew that she’d had millions of them. From when she was too young to know what they were. She knew also that she’d not had one while having sex with another person until she was 22.  She also knew that she would never have an orgasm the first time that she had sex with a person. She was simply too stressed about performing well for that to happen. She was not too sure how she would be judged, so she was better off focusing on the man she was with than on her own pleasure. She could always come by herself, later, if need be. Come to think of it, which orgasms could she remember? The best ones were the surprising ones, where she didn’t need to delve into her own fantasies to help her along and she was simply brought to climax by a particular coincidence – where she became space and time, a celestial body, seemingly free of philosophy.

She found the location and time of her orgasms to be insightful. On her own, she could come very easily. In her most lust filled hazes, she could make herself orgasm in public, without being noticed. She could squeeze her thighs together and have the most intense orgasms within a couple of minutes. She had lost count of the times that she had done so after sex with boyfriends too, when they had gone to sleep after climaxing themselves. When she was with another person though, she sometimes would orgasm just as intensely, but it was rare.

She maddened herself in thinking about her orgasms. She had little to go on in terms of a guide, if she was honest. The books she read would help a little, but conversations with men, or even other women, did not get her any further. She thought that she had orgasms in places and in situations that were not ‘normal’. She thought her fantasies might be a somewhat weird, too. It was not until she found Nicholson Baker and his beautiful, intimate yet completely strange Vox, Fermata and House of Holes78 that she found playful (completely weird spaceless and timeless) fantasies without jealousy and possession, without tears, and without the violence and boredom of pornography. She was always perfectly happy to watch pornography with her lovers, and sometimes she would watch it herself – when her desire had reached a particularly insatiable peak, and she found herself without a man next to her. But it was a flat orgasm for her. She found play with concepts to not only be intellectually exciting, but erotically thrilling too. What if she turned jealousy inside-out? What if she turned her skin inside-out? What if she played with the boundaries of animal-human, inhuman-human, in her filthy mind? What if she started fucking with paint, with blood, with pine cones? What if, like in the House of Holes, she forgot about boundaries, identities, right/wrong, straight/gay, human/inhuman, and instead, did whatever she wanted? What if the world started talking a ‘new round soft language’?79

Because House of Holes titillated her so much, she was fascinated. Whenever she read erotic texts, whether Baker’s, or Houellebecq’s, or Roche’s gloriously filthy, stinking Wetlands, or even the slightly more serious Réage’s Story of O, she found the wetness of her pussy to be more visceral than in any other circumstances. It was like when her philosopher was emailing her while she was sat on that faux leather sofa at the Cap. The power of this perverse body built by erotic words was such that it touched her with more intensity than a human body. It was crazily pure – without any hang-up, no jealousy, no desperation, no frustrated longing, not even a decision, no waiting, not ‘oh is this OK’; it was as if she had missed the split second of ‘consent’. She did not need to decide, in fact, she couldn’t make a decision. She had no choice whether to be aroused by Lanasha fucking a Magic Kentucky Lime fruit in House of Holes, which will give her ‘extreme cravings for stiff cock’ or Shandee’s lessons on penis-washing, or her relationship with Dave’s disembodied arm, or most importantly, the irresistible Deleuzian beauty of Baker’s silver egg hatching, where miniature lovers learn how to kiss and fuck inside a tiny silver egg, forever suspended in ecstasy as they fall asleep in each other’s silver arms, wrapped in a wash cloth, destined to forever discover sexuality together. She could not resist Roche’s schoolgirl musings of holding cum inside her body for as long as she can – a smelly gift that keeps on giving, oozing out of her pussy, ‘smiling blissfully in my little puddle of sperm’ even while listening to the teacher ‘going on about philosophical attempts to prove the existence of God’.80

How familiar that sounds. How touched she was not only erotically, but in a more profound – rather ironically – philosophical way. How futile man’s musings are in relation to the existence of God, their attempts to be God through their words, to write the cleverest thing, the rightest thing, and all the while – there are these orgasms in places they never imagined. She was convinced that a ‘soft round language’, a language of fucking, was to them, rather trivial.

Good! She thought. Trivial is good. Sexier. More serious. Time: 4.30pm. She drew spirals in her field work diary. Round and round and round and round, like a finger, tracing the edge of her nipple – intolerably gently, like the feel of a draping soft and silk cloth, barely touching, then just about barely brushing the pinkness of her nipple. From the outside, the fabric would be tented, a growing nipply tenting. The touch would be so gentle it would cause her skin to erupt in waves, and a hot dull ache in her vulva. The fabric moves to her pussy. The draping is not so successful, since the fabric then sticks, the viscous liquid cooling on withdrawal of the cloth, joyously sticky. Reminiscent of pillows in early mornings and late nights after hot filthy fucking dreams – the cold soft fabric presses desperately against her clitoris. She particularly liked to do this after fucking and being filled with sperm. The smell was so thick, so intimate, so kind, so warm and so safe that she wanted to eat it. She ground her hips into the sand, feeling the walls of her sticky cunt rub together, as she looked right into the eyes of a man at the back of the beach. Grains of soft sand jumped into the wind and blew across her naked buttocks, sand-dashing them gently, like a light spanking, reddening her grinding cheeks. The beach was quiet and she just looked at him, as he lazily stroked his cock. She thought about rows of erections, playing with the idea of touching each one – finding the folds, maybe licking the tips where a small pearl of tasty liquid might gleam. She would touch all different sized cocks, sniff them, taste them, without feeling bad about not making them come. She wanted women too. She did the same with their breasts, she kissed their necks and she walked on her hands and knees, so she could lick the tasty clitorises that she saw. All the while, she stared at the man at the back of the beach. The sun held her back and her sunglasses hid her pre-orgasmic eyes. She looked at him while another man started to suck him off. Fucking, pure and simple – she came just as the sea was creeping up to her toes, between land and sea, between solid and fluid, and with not a thought of philosophy, or philosophers, or for the saltier side of her sexuality. Not despite, just because.

We can see that she comes in all sorts of ways, both associated with, and disassociated with how one might think female human sexuality is imagined, or how (she thinks in her most frustrated moments) the male version of female sexuality is hoped to be. She sometimes likes to watch a woman being taken from behind, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she feels like she wants to fuck a whole rugby team, sometimes she wants to spend hours with a woman, just caressing. She likes to play, to think about and to read about, without having to do. She would like to sometimes share her fantasies, sometimes keep them quiet. She wants to feel safely in danger. She sometimes wants the touch of things, rather than people. Of fur, rather than skin. Her sexuality fleets and flits and fucks.

Since Deleuzian thought, the orgasm has been very problematic, since it is the genesis of sexual identity.81 She feels there is a lot of truth in this position (pardon the pun). Identity, whether it be womanhood or masculinity, straightness or gayness, a big bundle of assumptions in relation to how that person gets their orgasms, comes with it. She never knows what box to tick on those wretched Equal Opportunity Forms that you must fill in when applying for jobs or study. Sometimes she feels straight, sometimes she feels gay, sometimes she feels bisexual, sometimes she feels like a woman, a man, or in-between. She could select ‘prefer not to say’. She always felt that this would indicate some harmful closeted silence about her sexuality though and in fact, evidence pointed to the fact that this would be the most harmful box to tick. She would prefer to say. In the space of those little boxes on the form, she was expected to disclose where and how she got her orgasms and it was categorically not possible for her to tick all the boxes.

You see, the site of her orgasms are part of how her identity is built and the things she is allowed to, or assumed to, desire. This assumption is very important, since it allows the world to know her desire, and therefore, hopefully, tame it and control it, and to stop it causing any problems. Desire cannot be as Deleuze and Guattari had envisaged, as a wave or force that just wants, rather than wants, despite. The vision or image of the space of ‘despite’, or the gap to be filled, is a reflection of outmoded gender politics. It is only through untying sexual desire from pleasure and imaging a future of disruptive gender politics, ranging from eco-politics to the politics of reproduction, can we give the orgasm back to the body.82

The future is well and positively imagined by philosophy. This is a strengthening thought. But what remains is the question of ethics:  what do we do when problems arise. What do we do when our newly imagined and futurist desire, our new and ‘untied’ orgasms cause suffering to something (physical, emotional, psychological), a person, a thing, an animal, a sex robot?83 In short, when we shed gender, when we shed sexuality and we shed spatial-temporal orgasmic assumptions, with identity fully disrupted, what would be an orgasmic version of ethics? Ought we not understand more about our own sexuality first and find its orgasmic ethic? While the laws of spaces of so-called radical sexuality, such as the Cap, such as libertine clubs and so on are well known, she suggests that the ethics, or that is, the experiences of men and women who fuck there, are not.

The reality of all this is played out at the Cap [Cap D’Agde, Southern France], with every round of applause with every male orgasm. Male ejaculation is celebrated explicitly, while the female orgasm is less obvious – either in terms of its genuineness, or its genesis. This seemed to match with her unrelenting feeling that identity was never right. This seemed to not be a problem, until it was coupled with judgment. It is the case that judgment gives us our current ethical framework for our desire – that is, that there is (apparently, so she is told) an ethical code associated with sexuality. The philosophical foundations of this (she is told) are solid and true. The philosophers who wrote these foundations are (she is told) very clever, and, solid and true. The God who breathed life into these words, knows well both her heart, and her clitoris. Spinoza was a clever man, Deleuze too. Her philosophers. Lots of clever men, have written her sexual ethics, so far.

Fucking Judgment

We then both share her partner’s cock, sucking him and licking his balls, she holds my mouth open while he ejaculates into my mouth (and also on my Raybans). Applause. I then get off my knees, exchange pleasantries (as much as I can in broken French and English). So tired. Few men hanging around now, a man (who it turns out is from Leeds, 40s) talks to me. He says, ‘very sexy’ I said thanks, then eventually ask why he comes to the cap, he says ‘it’s so free, I like to look’. The French woman of the couple tells me I suck very well, she said my husband say it’s very good. I shrug and say ‘thanks!’

[extract from Fieldwork Diary]

We have seen that representations (whether legal, philosophical or personal) of encounters and then the judgments that flow can fiercely misrepresent sexuality, by making assumptions about orgasms.  She felt that it was neither good, nor bad, to have been part of the encounters that she was part of at the Cap. One thing is for sure though, is that she never had an orgasm on the beach at the hands of another person. Nor was she aroused by another’s touch. She knew it was not just the sand that stuck to her, preventing the fluids from flowing. When all said and done, she felt much too alone. While an impressive performance of pornography was clearly appreciated by all who observed and took part either directly and indirectly, it was all rather sad. It could have been the case that it was just her. This was perfectly possible. Maybe every man and woman there was enjoying it far more than her. Maybe their orgasmic ethic was far more adventurous than hers.

To be frank, she had no idea anymore what was right and what was wrong. It was not only in relation to her philosopher and her philosophy that she felt a sense of responsibility, but also to her own body. How on earth was she supposed to know what to do. She was tired of these questions. She was tired too of the constant questioning that she found herself doing, year after year, hour after tormented hour. She was tired of being alone. She was tired of her own tastes and wished, with all her heart, that she was either one of those brave women who just wanted to have a family and have a calm and kind domestic sexuality, or she was one of these special women who had this ‘Cap-sexuality’, a libertine way of being without jealousy. No matter how hard she tried, she knew that she could never be the woman who lay there watching her partner with another woman. No matter how much the thought aroused her in the privacy of her own masturbation. No matter how much jealousy aroused her in her fantasy world, it destroyed her in its reality.

The thought of her philosophers at home in their intimate worlds without her, and with their wives caused her to spontaneously burst into tears. The sight of dogs and babies would break her heart, since they reminded her of a world she was missing. Yet she was sat at the Cap, crying toward the sunrise.

At the beach, ready for sunrise. My my, how wonderful it is and just before simply bursting with life, buzzing in the air, the day to come. All the energy from the night before, the days before and those to come, skulking below the horizon. Reflected in the surface of the sea. It is completely mad here, on my way here, I see to my left, doing some exercises, one of the guys cruising me yesterday. As I knew would happen, on this deserted beach at this time, he starts to run over to me. I tell him I want to be on my own, he asks if he can walk with me, I say thanks but no. I want to be alone, with the sunrise, reflect with some beautiful music X gave to me that he said reminds him of us.

I sit a way up the beach, near to where I was yesterday, just at the moving edge of the sea. 10 mins and the guy comes running up to me, past and then turns back, sits next to me, too close. I explain again I want to be on my own, he says ‘no speak, just meditation’. I nod, but doubtful of this. 2 mins later, he stands up and takes off his shorts and sits back down. I am conscious of this but do not look up, then see him reaching for my foot, erection in hand. I move away and say, I told you I wanted to be on my own, he says I just like being near you, and I say thanks and this is nice, but I want to be on my own, I get up, he asks me not to go but I walk off. I feel a bit bad, but this is my time for myself. I now see a fisherman, calmly walking in and out of the calm sea, just so stunning, magical. Another man with a metal-detector walks up to me and just says c’est magnifique, I say oui, oui, c’est magnifique. He walks off. One lone man also walks naked urgently around the beach.

We are the only people there.

Extract from field diary: 15 July 2014, 6.20am

 

If you loved this story, vote for it in the Readers’ Choice awards by 20 June or buy the book.

Victoria Brooks is a researcher and writer interested in sex, ethics, bisexuality and trauma recovery, while also being a graduate student on the MA Novel Writing program at Middlesex University, London. She writes queer (sometimes erotic) fiction and her writing has been published in Litro, Stone of Madness Press and Lickerish Library. Victoria’s second creative non-fiction book called Mistress Ethics: On the Virtues of Sexual Kindness is out later this year for Bloomsbury. Her first book, Fucking Law (Zero Books) was out in 2019. She is also working on her first queer sci-fi novel.

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