I’ve been experimenting with writing from a male POV, trying to get better at it. Click is a fictional short story set in Cambodia. It contains violence and nonconsesual sex and is meant to be quite disturbing. If this sort of content upsets you, please do not read it!
I’d really like to acknowledge two excellent male writers who helped me with the tone and voice of the story. Both I, Sadist and Riccardo Berra of Apostrophe gave me their time, their critical eye and their excellent feedback. Thanks again to both of you.
________
Prey Chruk, Northern Cambodia, 2003
Lying on his belly in the middle of a rice paddy, Carl showed the new trainee, Sovann, how to come at the anti-personnel mine, partially embedded in the muck, at a 30 degree angle and gently touch the knife tip to the side of the box, feeling for give. The young man, sweating as profusely as Carl inside his protective helmet, grinned and copied him. He had a nice steady hand, wasn’t easily spooked or too superstitious. Carl felt a swell of pride for his student.
The bitch of PMD-6s were their wooden boxes. The metal detectors would often pass them over, and even identifying them could be dangerous. Their housing, often partially rotted away in the moist earth, was unstable and the lightest exploratory prods with a knife tip could set them off.
“Okay, so, we know what it is. We know it’s intact. We know it’s probably still armed. So let’s mark it, map it, and then low order burn the little fucker,” said Carl, pulling back from his prone position.
The trainee marked the mine and followed Carl’s example, sitting back on his haunches and sheathing his probing knife. The cloud of mosquitoes that had settled on them as they worked now buzzed around them with ferocity.
Walking back along the previously cleared corridor, Sovann pulled off his helmet and, stowing it beneath his arm, his thin, brown fingers automatically rose to the small soapstone Buddha at his neck. One hundred meters further up the path, a mother was yelling something at two little boys who where frantically darting around just beyond the well-posted warning signs.
“We use DETA to burn?” asked Sovann.
“Sure we do. No point in trying to defuse those. They can fall apart in your hands as you’re working and turn you into confetti. Liquid Diethylenetriamine is the best way to go. One bottle on either side of the PMD-6 and remote detonation.” Carl swatted at one of the greedy little bloodsuckers that had found its way between his collar and the protective head covering. All he could think about was a nice, long cold shower.
“We do it now or later?”
Before Carl could answer him, the kids came running down the dirt path, chasing a loose and clearly distraught chicken. Sovann reached out an arm, as if in slow motion, catching one of the kids by the shoulder as he passed.
The other rushed onwards as Carl turned around to make a grab for him. Before Carl could take two steps, the child had caught the bird, secured it under his arm, and was turning back, but Sovann struggled with the other who was trying to fight his way free. His helmet fell away, bouncing off hard packed earth as the kid kicked and writhed. Sovann stumbled on a rut in the side of the path and pitched sideways taking the thin plastic marker ribbon to the side of the cleared corridor with him. He released the kid and went down.
Carl heard the crunch. Not of bone, or of gravel. It was the splintering of old, dried wood. Then came the blast.
By a quirk of fate, the shrapnel missed him completely. The kid standing next to him caught a few pieces in the leg and stomach. The chicken catcher came out of it without a scratch. At the hospital in Siem Reap, they removed fourteen shards of the dead trainee’s bone from Carl’s calves and thighs.
After that, he didn’t bother remembering his trainees’ names, or attempting to pronounce the names of the villages he cleared of mines. He didn’t give a shit whether kids with chickens trampled all over his neatly demarcated hot zones.
Carl came to care only for the breathtakingly elegant simplicity of the metallic snick in his head. Every time he defused a mine, he waited for the sound in a deafening vacuum of adrenalin rush that compressed his entire universe down to a pinpoint of white heat. When the click didn’t come, he imagined it vividly, and all the red rain that might follow. Then he moved on to the next marker and the next rush. His life became simple.
FCC, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2008
Her tongue tip darted out to lick at the salt-rimmed cocktail glass, before sipping some of the bright liquid. She nodded too vigorously and laughed too loud at something her limp-dick colleague whispered in her ear.
Fucking self-satisfied, smug pricks, thought Carl. The sleeping anger curled, flexed and came to life in his belly as he settled onto a stool at the bar. The Aussie Mother Teresa and her sickening entourage of bleeding hearts were having their wholesome Friday night out. Stupid, blind idealists, and she was the worst of the lot; her hospice for diseased whores was the flavour of the month cause celebre. Flavour of the year, in fact.
He could have her easily; there wasn’t a single white female in Phnom Penh who he couldn’t have. They were all just too damned eager for any cock they could get. The vast majority of single white men – many of the married ones too – preferred to spend their time with eyelash batting, simpering little Cambodian whores. Acquiescent, passive, and just simpler to deal with, Carl had fucked his way through most of the whorehouses in Phnom Penh.
Once, about three months before, she’d blown him off at a charity function at the Royal Palace. She’d looked him over with a glint of attraction in her eye, and Carl hadn’t missed it. But then she rushed off to drape herself over some greasy Italian who worked for the World Bank. For the rest of that evening, while the troll stared at her tits, she hit him up for cash for her glorious house for dying whores.
Of course, he knew all about her. With a resident foreign population of less than five hundred, everyone knew everybody and, for the most part, who was fucking whom. Any information not readily available could be bought. Carl had bought some dirt on her; the landlord of her villa was a slimy little bastard with considerable gambling debts.
This was no Snow White, despite her reputation. She’d been fucking some French photographer working with the Court of International Justice for the duration of the War Crimes Trials. The Frenchman had left and she hadn’t left with him.
It irked him that she’d been here almost as long as he had and still maintained that deluded well-meaning flush of a new arrival. After four years of digging landmines out of the red clay and the rice paddies of Cambodia, Carl had come to the conclusion that these fucking people had done this to themselves. They didn’t want or deserve to be saved from their own particular brand of vicious insanity. You only had to take a tour of Pol Pot’s old S-21 torture chambers to know that. If he had arrived there with hopes of making people’s lives better and safer, it had all dried up years ago. Now there was nothing but the click.
And the whores she cared for had known all about condoms. For fuck’s sake, the government had been giving them away for free by the cartload, but those stupid bitches couldn’t pass up the extra two dollars they could earn riding bareback. Now they had her – the Australian Mother Theresa – to hold their hand while they died of their own ignorance and greed.
Carl shifted angrily on his stool, tapped his empty glass of Chivas, and nodded at the bartender. Within seconds a new shiny glass with new shiny ice and a puddle of the golden liquid appeared before him.
Everyone was a whore here. The NGO fat cats, diplomats, the politicians, the military, and the charity organizations – they were the biggest whores of all. She was one too; she just didn’t know it yet.
When her companions left her at the bar, to go shoot pool in the room next door, she turned around. Carl caught her eye and gave her a bland smile. Lifting her second margarita in a gesture of cheers, she returned it.
“I saw you…? We met at the…” She tapped her finger to her slightly parted lips, searching for the connection and then looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“The Palace. The fundraiser for the Royal Ballet. And it’s Carl. Carl with a C”
“That’s right! Yes!” she said, overly loud and with bit of a slur. The alcohol had hit her bloodstream, probably on an empty stomach, he figured. Sliding off her stool, she walked around the curve of the bar to where he sat. Not exactly drunk, but definitely tipsy, she laid a graceful hand on his shoulder to steady herself. “How’s it going? Don’t you play pool?”
As she spoke, the left corner of her mouth crooked upward in the same devastatingly sexy smile that had caught his eye the first time they’d met. “No, I don’t.”
“Then,” she placed her glass down next to his with exaggerated care, and scrunched her brow, “that makes you my friend. Because I’m shit at it, and no one will play with me.”
Oh, I’d love to play with you, thought Carl. A series of images blossomed and died in his mind’s eye: her naked form, his hand pushing her, bending backwards over the pool table. Pinning her in place by the neck with a pool cue. But Carl smiled his best smile. “Lucky me.”
She laughed. It was a low, earthy sound that made his cock twitch. “Very lucky you. Because you could be the proud patron of my very, very worthy charity. We’re running a…”
“I know what you run, Christina,” he said in a controlled voice.
“Oh.” She closed her mouth, shrugged and took a sip from her glass. “Have I hit you up already? Sorry! I don’t remember doing it.” She laid a hand on his arm in a gesture that was a cross between an apology and a comfort. A cascade of copper bracelets chinked as they slid down her arm and caught at her wrist.
“No. Last time we met, you had bigger fish to fry.” Carl’s eye followed the bracelets. The wrist was delicate, finely boned. It would snap like a twig or look lovely tied.
Getting her to go home with him was the easiest thing he’d ever done.
* * *
In the taxi on the way to his house, she started rambling on about her project, but he shut her up with a kiss, and she responded to it like a bitch in heat. It only took a casual brush of his fingers to bring her nipples to full attention.
They kissed again as they stood at his front gate, rummaging for his keys and she was all over him as they stumbled through the front door.
Where was all her altruism now? She was nothing but a greedy little cunt. But Carl played along with her game, letting her tease him out of his shirt as he led her into his bedroom. He locked the door behind them and stood watching and amused as she giggled and turned coy when he told her to undress.
“Come on, Carl with a C. You have to help me. I’m…I’m all thumbs,” she twittered.
He’d played along with that too, relieving her of her shirt and skirt with all the fawning and ardent whispers she was expecting.
She certainly wasn’t all thumbs once he’d kissed a trail down the side of her neck. She was tongue and hands and hips as she kissed him again and tugged at his belt buckle. Her ass cheeks flexed under his hands, and she alternated between grinding her panty-covered mound against the raging cock in his pants, and fighting with his zipper.
Carl wasn’t sure what turned him on more: her blatant eagerness, the sight the fine sheen of sweat that covered her exposed skin, or his own brilliant performance.
Kicking off his shoes and the last of his clothes, he reached between her legs and cupped her. The thin fabric at her crotch was slimy with need. His hand slid down the front of her panties, pushing fingers into her wet cunt. She gave him a low, lewd moan in return. He anticipated the moment when he would reveal himself, the moment he would hammer home the lesson, with pleasure.
Her hand wandered down his bare chest and curled around his shaft with a grip that was scorching, urgent.
Oh, you fucking sluts are all the same, he thought. But he chose the words he said aloud with care, enjoying the game, stringing her along just a little further. “Show me your breasts, Christine.”
Giving him another coy smile, she released him to reach behind and unhook her bra. She let it slip off her shoulders with the grace of an expensive call girl. Carl gazed at them appreciatively for a moment, and then, with one hand still busy in the depths of her snatch, he used the other to palm her tit. He rolled the stiff nipple between his thumb and index finger.
“You hungry for my cock, Christine?” he asked, so low it was almost a whisper. Carl released her nipple and reached for a condom off the bedside table. He ripped a corner off the sealed square with his teeth and handed it to her.
A red flush crept up over her cheeks and she gave a small nod. Taking the open package, she slid the lubed sheath down onto his prick, but she didn’t answer him.
Allowing a hint of the aggression he was feeling to bleed into his voice, he coaxed her. “Come on, don’t get all shy with me, girl. I know what you are. I know what you want.”
Christine moved to close the gap between their bodies, letting her hand curl around the back of his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. Carl resisted.
“You greedy little whore,” he grunted, spiking his fingers up inside her with a sharp jab.
Carl couldn’t tell if it was the words or the penetration that made her stiffen and pull back. But it made him smile, nonetheless. He felt her hand drop away from his cock. “I’m going to give you what you want, but not the way you wanted.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a single word out, he raised his hand and slapped her hard across the face.
“Fuck! Carl! What the hell?” she gasped. Her hand came up to cradle her cheek as the shock registered and she twisted to get away from his fingers.
He pulled his hand from her cunt roughly, chuckling. “Come on, baby? What’s wrong?” he teased. “Want your money up front, bitch?”
Without waiting for an answer, Carl grabbed her shoulder, turned her and pushed her face down onto the bed. She struggled to scramble away, but he had her good and tight by the back of the neck, and forced her legs apart with his knees. In one hard shove, he pushed into her.
“You sick fuck bastard!” She spat the words out into the bedding, surprise and shock, as well as anger, weighing them down.
For a moment, after he’d forced himself into her, there was nothing but the breathtakingly tight, hot interior of her cunt. Her muscles rebelled with autonomic ferocity, constricting around him in sine waves, trying to expel him. Then the rush began to move up his body like immersion in hot water. His grip on the back of her neck tightened, pinning her in place. The hand that so easily kept her two crossed wrists immobile at the small of her back did the same. That first breach of her body felt blindingly good: the taking and holding of forbidden territory.
Had he been younger, the sound she made would have undone him. The frightened and desperate whine of a small animal in pain. He stifled groan as more blood flooded into his cock, swelling him, forcing her open to him.
“It hurts. You’re hurting me,” she warned in strangely detached tone, as if she were telling him something he didn’t already know.
“Yes, I am,” Carl whispered back. He wanted her to realize that he could have let the evening play out the way she had expected. She would have given freely what he was now taking by force, but this was how he wanted it.
Her next word was a puff of breeze. “Why?”
“Because I can.”
That opened the floodgates; she began to cry softly, in short, gasping sobs. Tears pooled in the corner of her eye, where it met the bridge of her nose, and Carl could not look away.
He withdrew and thrust again, hard enough to spill the little well of tears. As much as his body urged him on, it was not his intention to use her quickly. He wanted to make sure she understood that was taking her, not furtively or guiltily, but with the casual pace of an owner secure of his possession. But it wasn’t easy to restrain himself; every muscle, every sinew in her body was locked rigid, making the sensation of pushing into her depths all the more delicious.
Then, suddenly, as if a switch had flipped, she stopped crying, her body went limp.
“Aw, Christine. Giving up so soon?”
She didn’t answer. The room echoed with the ragged exhalations he forced from her as he fucked her. He would have loved to know what was going on inside her head – it irked him he wasn’t sure.
Keeping a firm grip on her wrists and bending over her, he said, “Are you just going to lie there and take it, baby?” His fingers released the back of her neck and pushed up into her tousled brown hair. He fisted them and tugged. “Take it like a whore?”
“Fuck you,” she hissed between clenched teeth.
“I have to say,” he sneered, grinding into her, “You’re a bit of a disappointment, sweetheart. All that passion for your cause…I kind of hoped it would translate, you know?”
Whether she liked it or not, the ease with which he was stroking into her and the wet sounds coming from her cunt were obvious. Carl knew better than to mistake it for a sudden change of heart. It was her body’s way of protecting itself. Nonetheless, it was something he could use against her.
“You like it this way – huh? Because you’re getting pretty juicy down there, baby.”
As the words left his mouth, he knew he’d hit her button. Her body tensed again, she writhed beneath him.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” she screamed, trying to raise her shoulders off the bed. “Just fucking get it over with, you shit!” A flush of rage crept up the sides of her neck and onto her cheek. She was past shocked and into livid now; her back rose and fell frantically as she drew breath. The change pushed a new wave of lust through his veins. This was better.
“What’s wrong with you? Can’t you come?” she spat out. “Not quite the man you thought you were, asshole?”
Carl gave her hair a hard yank, hearing the strands snapping and tearing in his fist. He pushed her joined wrists up her back, knowing exactly what sort of pain it would cause her. She gave a loud, pitched gasp.
“Fuck, sweetheart, I was holding off for you. But…” he growled, “but who knew you were going to be such a frigid bitch?” He delivered the two words with a pair of brutal thrusts.
He felt her rage tighten around him. If he hadn’t slowed down, he would have lost it. But he couldn’t resist baiting her further.
“Is that why the French boy left? Did you disappoint him, too?”
Her body seized. “FUCK…YOU…” she hollered.
Carl laughed. “Come for me, Christine. You can do it!”
“You’re fucking sick.”
“Yeah. Sick of holier than thou bitches like you,” he muttered.
Letting go of the fistful of her hair, he shoved his hand beneath her, fingers plunging between her cunt lips, and found her clit. It was small, smaller than a lot of women he’d been with. But that was, he knew, no measure of its sensitivity. Whatever fight she had put up before paled in comparison to her struggles then. She bucked and writhed, and actually pushed her ass back against him to get away from his fingers.
“You total shit! Don’t you fucking dare!” she roared. “Oh! Don’t you bloody dare!”
“Lie still.”
“No! Fuck you! No! No! No!”
The words accompanied a concerted effort on her part to fight free, and although he considerably larger, the violence of her struggles almost threw him off. It only took a little more upward pressure on her joined wrists to remind her of just how much pain she could be in it she didn’t stop fighting. She screeched and stilled but it didn’t stop her protestations.
It was her ‘no’s that spurred him on. It’s funny, Carl thinks, the word is meaningless when it came to women. Here she is still trying to talk her way out of out the sensations he was forcing upon her, but it was having no effect at all on her body. Her tensed passage flooded around his cock, making each thrust easier.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
The word had no meaning; it became nonsense noise and the meter by which he fucked her, until he knew he couldn’t last any longer. Just as he began to doubt that he would make her orgasm, she went rigid, contracting around his shaft in a rippling sequence that set off what, at first, felt like a sharp metal click. But the sensation expanded at the speed of sound, rushing up his spine, and, like the aftermaths of every click he’d ever imagined, detonated at the back of his skull like a shotgun. He roared and sank his cock one last time into her spasming body, erupting in sharp, scorching spurts.
The minute he caught his breath, Carl rolled off her and got up, disposing of the spent condom. The bitterness of her sobs annoyed him. He tried to ignore it the sound as he pulled his clothes back on.
“Fuck, honey. You are what you are. There’s no point crying about it.”
He laughed, but it felt hollow in his chest. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the envelope he’d prepared earlier in the day, containing a certified counter check for $10,000 USD, signed over to her charity. He tossed it on the bed beside her.
“There you go, Christine. Don’t spend it all in one place. I’m off to find myself a whore who actually knows her business.”
Carl left the house and caught a cab to the big brothel near Sisowath Quay.
When he returned home shortly before dawn, she was gone, just as he expected. She’d done a pretty good job of tearing up his bedroom, but the maid would take care of that.
And, just as he expected, she’d taken the money.
Brava, RG, brava!
Well, bravo to you! Your crit was invaluable. Thanks again for your help, R.
lovely, I like how she gets to climax too, makes me miss my ex girlfriend… le sigh x
And this is why I come back time and time again to lose myself in your weaved words and again you have succeeded. Not disturbing at all. Wonderfully raw and from the male POV .. damn good writing.
I wish I could take full credit for the writing, but I had a considerable amount of help on this.
Eek. Dark shit. But you sure do write a whole world into existence.
Extraordinary! I am impressed (and that doesn’t happen often).
not so into the male POV but good story all the same
So well crafted, Rgrl! Another example of why I always recommend your work as both hot and smart, and your site as must reading for intense erotica and sharp critical thinking.
So cool RG, particularly the comments from female readers, some who may not usually go for male POV, but acknowledge the story nonetheless. Your credibility and the trust you’ve built with your readers (F&M) allows you to seduce us and lead us into temptation in places we might not go alone.
At your service and at your pleasure, R
Stunned …. wow.
Very well done, RG. Impressed with the POV, the vividness of the scene, and the depth of the effect on the reader.
As in I just almost threw up.
And I mean that as a compliment.
God R.G., I’m still sweating……….your a better man than some men I know.
I like Rachael’s response!!!
I think the male pov in this sounds absolutely, if rather chillingly, authentic. You and your tutors have done an amazing job.
Oh my. Male POV for the win! I find this incredibly hot.
It makes me curious…I find male gay porn really hot and always thought it was about there just being more maleness involved. This is the same sort of hotness but hetro. Hmmmm. Will muse on that.
@iamhewhoisiam: I read your comment last night and nearly responded, but decided to think on it for a while. You said, “I like how she gets to climax too.” You said “gets to”.
On the other hand, I expect that the moment of her orgasm will be for her the single worst moment of the rape. I imagine that her orgasm will make the psychological consequences and memories of the rape one hundred times worse. I would not be surprised if she hated and tried to avoid orgasms for quite a while into the future.
You seem to see the fact of her orgasm as a positive for her. Can you comment again and explain to me where you’re coming from and whether you’re joking?
(RG, I’m sorry if this is a hijack. Please feel free to delete if you don’t want this conversation to go on in this space.)
Rachael,
This is where the feedback thing gets dicey. I have nothing against hosting a debate in the comments, but I get the sense that the subtext of your challenge to iamwhoiam is that he might have the same reaction to a rape in reality.
I don’t think that is a fair assumption. He has expressed his reaction, at a gut level, to a piece of erotic fiction – which is where the response to sexual fantasy lies.
I don’t want to speak for him, but I also don’t want him to feel he has to defend his reaction to a piece of fictional fantasy, when, in some ways, I think you might, perhaps unconsciously, be moving the debate into the context of reality and real rape.
Is that fair?
Rachael? Iamwhoiam?
I wrote this piece knowing that the rape, and the orgasm specifically, would be read differently by different readers. That each one would take something quite different from it.
When I discussed the concept of this story from a male POV with one the men who helped me a lot in writing it, he felt that her orgasm was very important to the fantasy because brute force, i.e. penetration by force, is a kind of blunt instrument, but that forcing the orgasm is a greater domination: a kind of hijacking of pleasure, on top of the hijacking of the body. As a woman, hard to get my head around, but I did come to understand the dynamics of the fantasy from that perspective.
From a female perspective, still within the context of a fantasy, I personally find the idea of forced orgasm quite erotic because it relieves the female character from any responsibility in the act, or the pleasure. I am not equating my fantasy to the very real, very scaring effects that an event like this in real life might have on a woman. I want to make that perfectly clear.
However, I think one of the major problems with this story, for many female readers, is that there is an absence of desire on the part of the man. He is not really seeing or desiring HER, but rather a projection of the things he both despises and loves in his own, very damaged worldview. He wants her ‘fall’ because it justifies his ‘fall’.
As much as I can see the realism of that in a certain kind of male, and I think I’ve written him pretty well, I have to be honest and say that it lacked eroticism for me, specifically because she could be anyone who represented all these things be had this love-hate relationship with. And so, as a piece of erotic non-con, it doesn’t work for me.
Now, it may be that women who find denigration or erasure of identity fantasies erotic, this might work for them. It’s really not my kink at all, so if it worked for you, I’d be really interested to hear it.
However, from speaking to a few male readers, it does seem to work for them, and it think the forcing of the orgasm, beyond just the rape, represents a level of power that they enjoy in fantasy.
It was very interesting to explore the differences in the way men and women would read this piece. And writing it from a male POV has afforded me some insight into non-consensual erotic fiction that I would not been able to perceive had I stuck to writing it the way I normally would, from the woman’s POV.
Hugs,
RG
Now, it may be that women who find denigration or erasure of identity fantasies erotic, this might work for them. It’s really not my kink at all, so if it worked for you, I’d be really interested to hear it.
I am a woman, a feminist, a lesbian, and this story works for me on many levels.
The primary one is about what I love and find erotic: giving up my power over to someone. It’s the essence of power exchange.
First, I understand it’s only fantasy. I don’t want to be raped and don’t find real life rape erotic. Rape is abuse of power, not power exchange.
This story isn’t power exchange either, because she doesn’t give up her power freely.
But this story works for me because it’s from his POV. I want to give up control to someone who could take control like your MC took control, who could understand me the way he seems to understand her (even though he clearly doesn’t empathize with her).
Nice job. I’m glad I found you–so much erotica is so poorly written. It’s a pleasure to read someone as talented as you.
Yes. This.
While it doesn’t necessarily have to be rape (as I don’t find rape erotic, either), it is about someone capable of taking over in a more complete way than a mutually trusted D/s relationship generally affords. A complete and total loss of power. It is achieved through means I can’t condone, but I’m not sure how else to attain it, which is another reason fantasy is amazing (I could never stomach a “real life” version of this, but your story totally does it for me).
I just stumbled across your page. Are you still writing?
Hello Sarah. I’m afraid I’ve been pretty dry for inspiration for almost a year now. I think it is partially a product of having done a PhD in Erotic fiction writing and the current state of world events. The combo has really sapped by inspiration.
@rachael You make some very good points there Rachael. I simply meant that in a lot of stories of this genre (not as well written I admit, so much regards must go to Rgirl and cadre) The male will simply cum and leave.
I clearly didn’t look into the story as much as you did. I thought of it purely as a piece of erotic fiction, not an actual description of a real rape. I can differentiate between the two and whilst I can enjoy the story and even imply that I used to play these games with an ex, I would in no way encourage REAL rape in the REAL WORLD. I don’t read a superhero comic and think I can fly, I don’t read EF and think I can rape women. To be blunt, it is just a story. (albeit a well researched and written one x)
RG and iamhewhoisiam, I agree with everything you guys just said, especially about fantasy v. reality. I enjoy rape fantasies as well, although this particular approach was not erotic to me personally (like RG I prefer the fantasy rapist to be intensely desirous of his particular victim).
If iamhe had said, “I like how she climaxes too,” or, “I like that we get to see her climax,” or even, “I like that he forces her to climax,” I wouldn’t even have given it a second thought. That kind of thing can be very hot. I read the phrase “gets to” as suggesting that the climax made the rape better for the character, a bright spot in an otherwise awful sexual encounter. That seemed to me to be a misread of the way RG wrote the character of Christine, who did not seem to be ambivalent about her rape and seemed to be especially distressed about the climax.
So my convoluted point is that I never thought that anybody here thought rape was cool in the real world, and there are things besides rape that I enjoy in stories that I wouldn’t tell my friends about liking (see RG’s “The Gift”). I just thought that iamwhoisiam’s conclusions about what were going on in the character’s head were way off, and it actually sounds like that was not the case at all.
If I fail to make sense, please make me re-explain. Thanks to both of you for responding to my comment!
This (the story and its responses) is powerful stuff. My personal response to the POVmale character was at first almost too real… I carry around 2 or three Carls with a C in my heart and head from “in country” days. The FCC section is brilliant and I’m right with you. However I feel a shift in POV going into his apartment and during the actual rape. Perhaps it’s because I’m searching as a male for understanding of him that I feel a slight letdown as I feel a focus shift to her. During the rape I’m actually in her head which is a chillingly painful experience. Her climax from that perspective is gut-wrenching.
However his character becomes more of an enigma to me as he makes out a check and leaves her in his room. With that much violence wound up in his clockspring ”click”, the ending seems incongruous although preferable to the horrific outcome I felt impending.
Thank you again, RG for the ride…I was glancing sideways into a mirror the whole time.
Wow, great story, smartly and beautifully written.
Some of it I found hot, some not so much – and, RG, as you know, I kink for this kind of stuff. But the male POV is interesting because a lot of his focus is on her distress. I’m totally fine with a top getting off on that in the realm of kink; it’s just that my preferred focus is on the guy being a sick, gleeful bastard because that’s what gets me hot. I don’t particularly have a taste for wanting him to be intensely desiring of her. I like the blankness of this piece. But I found I couldn’t eroticise her prolonged distress – not because I found it disturbing; it’s just not so much where the focus of my kink lies.
And that isn’t meant in any way as a criticism of the story. If anything, it’s a compliment. For me, you really nailed the male POV and that particular focus on her suffering forms part of how you did it.
I also really appreciate the background that explains Carl’s misogyny and rage. I’ve recently been debating the issue of men writing rape fantasy on Alison Tyler’s blog, and how comfortable, or not, I am with that. You might find it interesting. (I have no idea if that html will work here.)
Anyway, cracking story, thanks for posting!
The link did work, and it’s a very interesting discussion. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Your ‘sick, gleeful bastard’ point is really well made. I can absolutely see your point of view.
Wow. That totally made me feel uncomfortable. But I love it when someone’s writing or a film makes me squirm. It means they did an awesome job. *wildly applauding*
It made me feel pretty uncomfortable to write, actually. But a lot of what I write does. I wrote a torture scene in The Tales of the Mumbai coven – not eroticized at all – that totally revolted me. But the story needed it. In fact, I’d say that writing violence of any kind is not my strong suit. But this was an interesting exercise, and I’m proud of the actual writing. I can’t honestly say that I’ll be revisiting it any time in the near future. But I was interested to get an email from a Vietnam vet who said he’d met a few Carls in his time. And the two male writers who helped me with this were both invaluable.
Perhaps a more official form of introduction is required, but I just found your work through a random Google search for tips on erotic writing and just had to let you know (in case you were in any doubt) just how talented you are.
This is an exceptional piece of writing, and I think you’ve done an extraordinary job of accessing the psychology of a particularly twisted, but perhaps all too common, male psychology. Your ability to craft prose that is brutal and distasteful while being, at some dark level, sexy as hell, is remarkable. You force the reader to confront the controdictions inherent in their own fantasies, and that’s no small feat.
Again, excellent work. I can tell that you’re going to be both inspiration and revelation in the months to come.
Consider yourself bookmarked.
RG – I follow you on Twitter but hadn’t visited your site until it was recommended to me by another writer. This is really brilliant, interesting stuff. Thank you!
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
No problem, thank you for writing it. This is the first non-con erotic fiction I’ve read, and interestingly, I enjoyed reading the male POV – I then read ‘Blindness’, and nearly stopped reading part way through (that story disturbed me – not a criticism, it just pushed a button). This one didn’t cause a negative emotional response for me in the same way that the female POV non-con did. However I note in the comments that many women seem to have the opposite experience. I’m glad someone is exploring these themes in fiction.
Also loved your review of 50 Shades.
Planning to spend a large part of the rest of my Sunday reading your fiction + blog.
Vina
“Acquiescent, passive, and just simpler to deal with,”
~probably shouldn’t mention because my grammar is weak, but the comma after “with” makes me twitch.
“her landlord of her villa was a slimy little bastard with considerable gambling debts.”
the?
“She let slipped off her shoulders”
needs an it?
Thank you for the story and thanks to everyone for the comments. Perhaps because of recent company, I was disturbed by how Carl’s further violence – his control of Christine’s pleasure – became a justification for the entire act. That by increasing his abuse he created a justification for it. By justification, I mean this: she came, therefore it was consensual, or consensual enough.
Now, I’m not saying that’s Carl’s thought process, or that it’s present anywhere in the story. And I absolutely do not consider that justification to be valid. What disturbed me is that I found the idea in my mind, and I could see men relating to it. And that while violence was bad, it was further violence that offered this false, and potentially seductive, justification.
Hello George,
Thanks for finding the typos and grammar problems in the text. That’s very welcome indeed.
As regards Carl’s unstated justification. From what I can tell, your reading of the text and my intention in the writing of it pretty much align. I’m confident that the vast majority of my readers are smart, critical thinkers. I don’t feel the need to steer their moral judgement of how fundamentally amoral Carl’s self-justification is. I know they’ll come to that conclusion themselves in exactly the same way that you did.
And the fact that you identified it as a ‘false, and potentially seductive, justification’ is exactly what I was aiming at. I just gave you the option to arrive at that conclusion on your own instead of stating it outright.
I feel that leaving space for readers to do this not only shows my respect for them, but offers them a deeper intellectual engagement with the writing and the subject.
Thanks for the explanation. As I was posting, I realized the justification did feel deliberate, and like it was in the text and not just my head. But I felt uncomfortable making that claim about your work, so I hedged. I’ll drop the hedging 🙂 Click was a strange read for me, the way it pulled things from my mind. I appreciate the writing and the space to consider it. Leaving that element unstated made it far more powerful for me.
I find myself returning again and again to analyze this piece. While it wasn’t written with the intent to necessarily arouse (?) I find it one of your most memorable works, mostly for the fractured characters and what propels them to do the things they do, and to be the way they are. On a purely superficial level, I adore your general word-choice and Carl’s voice in particular, however repellent he may be as a human being.
You truly have a gift for writing stories that stay with the reader long after they’re finished. <3
I’m so glad you revisit it. I do too.
You are partially right. In this story, I was very aware of the language I used and spent a long time trying to get it to the place where it was quite undilutedly transgressional. So for people who might be aroused by that transgression, they could be. And for people who could not, for whatever reason, keep the fictionality of the story in mind, it would not be overly eroticized. So, I’m glad for that little question mark in brackets, because it tells me I succeeded in my aim.
thanks for writing it, i really enjoyed the male pov, but especially the “hijacking” or the responsibility of orgasm, this is something i understand, it makes me somewhat melancholy because i cannot produce this reaction myself, i am small and petite, but i would certainly love to be able to do this to my husband, not so much rape but perhaps in a argument where he doesn;t want to, but instead would rather focus on the argument.
This is my first time here reading your work. I’m impressed. Short on time so this will be short, but I’ll be back for more!
“He wants her ‘fall’ because it justifies his ‘fall’.” Great analysis! Those 9 words sum up the underlying theme of the story (well, what I perceive as the underlying theme). The theme, for me, is damage. They are both damaged people doing good work in an atmosphere that epitomizes false charity. Hard not to be a cynic amidst all that.
Very hard indeed.
Job well done. I haven’t read anything like this in a long time, and I have an appreciation for male POV: imagining what it might feel like to be the person in control. Koodos.
The part about his donating the check caught me off guard? But, I like things coming out of left field like that!! Excellant story, as the song says, “Hot, Hot, Hot!”
I am speechless. That was amazing. You did very will. You have the male pov down to a t. Great job. I could see through his eyes and feel his rage and anger. Stories are best when you can see as the charter.
I have had to read this more than once to try to fully understand it. As many have said the stories on this site are of a really high quality, it takes you into another world. I think this is my favorite even though I hate it !! I have a little fantasy going on here where Christine goes back and makes sure the check is cashed and then she and some of her “do gooder” friends go obtain some accouterments such as rope/scarves, oh, I don’t know, candles etc., Pay Carl a visit. He’d probably like it but that’s ok, she can leave him a $100 gift card to his favorite brothel.
I loved this!! My favorite by far
Hello,I was surfing the net looking for a custom writer. I had run across a few but after reading samples of their work I passed them by. I was just about ready to call it a day when I came upon your site and after reading parts of some of your stories found that I really like your writing style. If you would be interested in writing a custom story, of course for pay, I would like to give it a try. Without going into details until I find that you are interested. Some tags would be: Adultery, revenge, N/C sex, torture, medical, bondage etc. etc.
Hope to here from you soon,
Thanks, Bill
Hi Bill,
I’m sorry but I don’t write custom stories. However, there are a lot of people who do.