L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Why have sex (Fiction edition)

August 9, 2007 on 3:02 pm | In General Musing, In the news, Sex Files |

The blogosphere was atwitter last week by the list of 237 reasons people have sex. I was agog myself that my own reasons were so far down the list. Is it naive of me to be surprised that fun, pleasure and intimacy don’t rank so high for most people? You can see the full list here.

But what about the world of fiction? Why do characters in books have sex? In a rigorous scientific survey (an evening spent skimming through a stupendously dreadful Hollywood sleaze 1982 paperback found on the shelf of a hotel room) I can positively state that men have sex for two reasons:

1. She’s so fucking hot he can’t control himself
2. He’s so fucking mad he can’t control himself

Women, on the other hand, are more complex. Yet nowhere does love, lust or even mere pleasure figure into the equation:

1. She was drunk (as usual).
2. She wanted to show that cheating bastard two can play that game.
3. She wanted to stick it to the conniving bitch who got the movie role that should have been hers.
4. She dared him to make her. And he did. And didn’t stop when she changed her mind - the filthy rapist.
5. It was her wifely duty, even though she’d caught him in bed with her twin sister (and was forced her to raise the child that resulted as her own)
6. She wanted to cure him of being (gay/impotent/other)
7. She want to prove to this whole stinking town she could have any man she wanted. Even yours.
8. Even though she still had the abs and tits of a teenager, she knew men would turn away in disgust, now that she’d turned thirty.
9. What’s the point of having the opening of your fabulous artwork at a fabulous NYC art gallery if you can’t boink your ex in the broom closet?
10. There’s been no sex for seven or eight pages and the readers might start to notice the hackneyed prose and ludicrous plot.

I won’t name the book, except to reveal that about 800 pages of it revolve around the making of a movie called “Miami Toast.” Miami Fucking Toast? It did, however, make for a hilarious evening of dramatic readings (”he wore a purple gabardine shirt with orange sequined guns pointing at each other on the chest, skin-tight tan velveteen pants, $2000 snakeskin belt (stolen from a rival) and a white stetson” - how did we ever get through the 80s?)

See more like that one:

• The Sin of Self-Restraint
• Hey, lady! You call that a G-spot?
• Eyes for guys. Dicks for chicks
• Trust Your Lust
• X-Rated Bible