THE PRISON OF THE ANGELS by Janine Ashbless

I Didn’t Know She’d Be So Kinky!

Janine Ashbless

You know that thing where characters get away from you while you’re writing, and do something you aren’t expecting?

That happened for me with Milja, the heroine of my Book of the Watchers trilogy. When I started the first book, Cover Him with Darkness, I thought she was going to be sort of vanilla. A bit sheltered due to an isolated childhood, a bit geeky, longing for passionate love but not in any knowing way.

Then she freed a fallen angel who became her demon lover, and because Azazel is necessarily a strong, even overwhelming personality, I figured Milja would have to be fairly happy to let him take the lead in bed. “She’s a bit submissive,” I told myself.

But Azazel isn’t just dominant, he’s wicked and seriously lacking in social boundaries. He likes to show her off, getting her naked and having sex in public. “That makes sense,” I reassured myself. “She’s always been the invisible girl: now she gets off on everyone watching her and her gorgeous bloke.”

But by the second volume of the series, In Bonds of the Earth, Milja’s deep in a not-really-platonic affair of frustration with a man, Egan Kansky, too. Is she so drawn to him because he’s the stable, kindly, human partner she can’t find in Azazel? Is she hell — her relationship with Egan has turned out to be even kinkier than her passion for Azazel!  Milja spent a childhood with an angel chained in the cellar, and it’s affected her deepest fantasies. She likes her strong, dominant masculine guys all tied up and helpless and suffering. Azazel won’t indulge her – he doesn’t have a submissive bone in his body – so she can’t help getting the hots for Egan and his admirable capacity for, ahem, soaking up damage…

By book three, The Prison of the Angels, the three-way relationship has left vanilla far behind. There’s a long and elaborate scene in which all three of them … well, that would be telling! Suffice it to say that Egan has all his boundaries pushed to the max and Milja has her most shameful fantasies exposed and fulfilled.

I wasn’t expecting to write this when I started. I thought I’d just stick to romance, mostly. Oh well ;-) Milja – sub, exhibitionist, shamefaced sadist – has turned out to be a bit of a shock for her poor writer!

Excerpt:

Egan’s got his eyes screwed shut, his head flung back, his throat stretched taut. Azazel looks down critically at his victim and slaps his still-pulsing cock hard enough to swing it.

“Again,” he says. “Harder.”

Somehow, Egan’s flesh stiffens obediently. That’s when I see the deadly little tethers snap and writhe loose from the bed. They stay knotted around his cock and balls like bizarre Christmas streamers, but at least he is free from the iron ring.

“Get further up the bed.”

Egan opens his eyes. He seems to realize slowly that he’s no longer tied down, but when he does he shuffles on his back away from Azazel with pitiful alacrity, as if he somehow thinks he can escape that long reach. He casts me a wild, shamed look.

“That’ll do,” Azazel decides. “You’d like to ride that now, wouldn’t you Milja? His rod and his staff will comfort you…here in the Valley of the Shadow.”

Ride that? Yes, always.

What is he planning?

I climb back onto the bed, nervous. Egan is looking from me to Azazel and back again as if we are conspiring assassins. His lips are swollen.

“And I will fasten him as a peg in a firm place; and he shall be for a glorious throne,” quotes Azazel, wandering around to slap my ass in encouragement. “Get up on your throne, little harlot.”

I thought I was a good girl. I thought that no matter what others did for my sake, I could stay innocent. I thought that as long as I acted out of love, I’d be blameless.

I was wrong, wasn’t I?

Milja Petak’s world has fallen apart.

Her lover, the fallen angel Azazel, has cast her aside in rage and disgust. The other contender for her heart, the Catholic priest Egan Kansky, was surrendered back into the hands of the shadowy Vatican organization, Vidimus, after sustaining life-threatening injuries.

She has killed and she has betrayed. She is alone, homeless, and at the end of her tether - torn apart by guilt and the love she has lost. But neither Heaven nor its terrifying representatives on Earth have finished with Milja. Both of her lovers need her in order to further their very different plans, and both passionately need her, though they may try to deny it.

Milja is once again forced into a series of choices as she uncovers the secrets Heaven has been guarding for centuries. But this time it is not just her heart at stake, or even the fate of a fallen angel.

This time, the choices she make will change everything.

This time it’s the End of the World.

The Prison of the Angels

by Janine Ashbless

The Prison of the Angels, the final novel in the Book of the Watchers trilogy, and the story of a young woman who releases a fallen angel from centuries of imprisonment, is now available from Sinful Press.

“When there’s war in Heaven, on which side will you stand?”

Genres: Hot M/F/M Romance, Thriller, Supernatural
Pages:  388

Prison of the Angels is available at 

Sinful Press  Amazon UK  Amazon US  Google Play and Kobo

Janine's Photo, by David Woolfall

Vampires, Witches, Fairy Tales and Sexual Initiation.

Anne Rice is perhaps best known for her vampire tales; tales which have a certain erotic frisson. She amazes me with her creative energy, creating not one, but two lengthy sagas. The vampire tales reach back into the dawn of time, building on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and creating a new mythology around the very beginnings of vampire evolution.

Someone correct me please if I am wrong, but I think that Anne Rice was the first to make vampires sexy, with their dark brooding erotic intentions.

Then there is the saga of the Mayfairs. A wealthy and powerful family of witches, breeding and mutating over the generations. Incestuous, charismatic -- a blip in their DNA produces a strain of monsters, the Taltos.

Anne Rice brings the two sagas together in her final novel; “Blood Canticle.”

What is not so well known, is that Anne Rice also has written erotica under the name of A.N. Roquelaure. Her “Sleeping Beauty” trilogy is loosely based on the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty. It is an allegory of sexual adolescence, sexual desire and finally, sexual maturity. The three books are: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty”, “Beauty’s Punishment” and “Beauty’s Release”.

They are erotic BDSM novels dealing with a wide spectrum of fetish and fantasy. They describe the sexual adventures of the female protagonist Beauty in a medieval fantasy world. Anne Rice doesn’t stop at Male/Dom and Fem/Dom, she covers fetish as diverse as anal fisting and pony play. There is rape as a fantasy; she also touches on bestiality. They were first published in America in the 1980’s.

In the familiar fairy tale, the beautiful sleeping princess is awakened by a kiss from a handsome prince. In Anne Rice’s version, the prince wakes the princess with a violent rape.

Anne Rice's retelling of the Beauty story probes the unspoken implications of this suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the Prince reawakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty's complete and total enslavement to him as Anne Rice explores the world of erotic yearning and fantasy in a classic that becomes a compelling experience.

About the same time that Anne Rice published the Beauty trilogy in America, the writer and Academic, Angela Carter published her collection of tales in “The Bloody Chamber.”

Angela Carter says of her collection:
“My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories.”


Both writers are talking about the hidden side of our psychology. The side, that in the cold light of day we dare not own.

The tales from both writers give us permission to fantasise and even act upon our darkest dreams. The stories liberate us and set us free from guilt, fear and shame.

Freud talked about the Id. Here is what he says:


"It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the Dreamwork and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations.... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle."


“The id is the unorganised part of the personality structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives. Id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. The id contains the libido, which is the primary source of instinctual force that is unresponsive to the demands of reality. The id acts according to the "pleasure principle", seeking to avoid pain or unpleasure (not 'displeasure') aroused by increases in instinctual tension”

WIKI

“The mind of a newborn child is regarded as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and needs immediate satisfaction, a view which equates a newborn child with an id-ridden individual.”

Jungian psychoanalysis talks about “the Shadow”.

"Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. It may be (in part) one's link to more primitive animal instincts which are superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind.”


Jung also believed that "in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness—or perhaps because of this—the shadow is the seat of creativity.";so that for some, it may be, 'the dark side of his being, his sinister shadow...represents the true spirit of life as against the arid scholar.

Some of these ideas here are my own...I have also drawn from sources from the Web.

LOVE, LUST, PASSION. WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

Love's Philosophy:

THE fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle—
Why not I with thine?



Sorry, Percy Bysshe Shelley, it ain’t gonna happen.

Forget it. If that special something is missing, she won’t want to kiss you. Your lips will repel her. Your breath will disgust her. She won’t fall into your arms -- no matter how much you weave your magic with those wonderful words -- it’s just not going to work.

Am I talking about love? Lust? Sexual Attraction? Infatuation? Passion? I don’t know. Probably I’m talking about all of them.

Love -- unrequited love. Thousands and thousands of words have been written about it, by pens far more graceful and elegant than mine.

And the songs. We all have our favourites. Beautiful words, melodies, rhythms and harmonies, that remind us of that one time that special something happened. Makes us yearn for it to happen again.

Thousands of Romance writers, re-write the same story, over and over again. He’s a bastard. She falls in love with him, despite herself. The reader is in love with him too. The reader is addicted to the re-telling of the story. The reader believes in that elusive something.

Nobody can bottle it for sure; that thing that makes it happen. Perfume distillers with all their ancient skills have tried to capture it for centuries. It cannot be done.

If that something is missing, then it can’t be found.

A friend of mine, Lucy had a guy doing some building work in her house. They got talking -- she touched his hand…

Within a second they were in each other’s arms. Within another second their tongues were down each others’ throats -- it happened, just like that. No need to analyse it; there’d be no point anyway. That mysterious, elusive thing had happened.

Time stood still. The overworked phrase suddenly made sense.

What was it? Raw lust? I don’t know; neither does Lucy.

Lucy and her builder are still together, two years later.

But it can hit you at anytime. I do believe it. Eyes meet across a crowded room/restaurant/rock festival. And he/she is there. The one. It may only last for an hour, or days. For some it can last a lifetime.

But what is IT? Where is IT? Why does one person make our juices flow, cocks stand to attention? Another person, leaves us, well…flaccid and dry?

So I guess I have ended up talking about lust. Does lust come first? (pun intended).

Sometimes it smoulders, long and low. Think of all those office Christmas parties. Folk who have barely spared a glance for each other, all through the long year, are suddenly together. Alcohol lowers the inhibitions, and it hits you.

That happened to me, long ago. It took twenty years to burn itself out.

Then months ago, I was convinced it was going to happen again. A guy I knew from a long while back. But when we kissed there was nothing. Nada. Rien.

I felt sad, cheated, disappointed.

So did he…

A life of submission & dedication to her Master.

I wonder how many of you know my friend Oatmeal Girl? I’m using the word ‘know’ reservedly – as far as it is possible to know someone in this, rather desolate at times, cyber landscape. I’ve never met Oatmeal Girl – we only really became aware of each other when we both had stories published in 2010, in Logical Lust’s ‘Best S & M III’.

I know that she follows my blog – silently – very, very occasionally leaving me an astute, thoughtful comment…I know from those comments that I am communicating with a refined intellect…a lover of words, finding the right word…the perfect word following the perfect word.

But most of what I know about Oatmeal Girl comes from her blog – ‘Submission and Metaphor’. From her intriguing poems and poetic prose I learn that she is a submissive woman in a compelling relationship. Oatmeal Girl speaks exquisitely of how she willingly relinquishes control bowing humbly to the man whom she loves and adores, her Master. She refers to him as ‘the Sadist,’ sometimes as ‘the Fiend. The Sadist knows what is best for her – the tasks he sets her are acts born of love, just as Oatmeal Girl’s dedication to the tasks are a demonstration of her love and devotion for him.

Yes, they love -- but let’s not be shy about this daunting, haunting relationship -- Oatmeal Girl tells of butt plugs, caning, chains, collars, floggings, masochism, masturbation, orgasm denial and spankings. These are the things that inform their love for one another. It must be an exhausting relationship at times and not just for the submissive who time after time submits to the ordeal. The Dominant has to plan, organise, take care of his submissive and take care of himself – keep himself physically fit, emotionally fit too.

At this point it seems appropriate to give Oatmeal Girl the opportunity to read what I’m saying about her, so I forwarded my ramblings to her. Here is her response – as you will read – in some ways I am right – in others I fall way off the mark.


“What intrigues me is the impression you have of the relationship from the glimpses I've given into some of my emotional reactions to it. What you (and many others) mainly see at this point - because that's what it seems I've been describing - is the love part of it. Which is only part of the foundation of the relationship. As the fiend reminds me periodically - and as I know deep down inside - the CORE of the relationship, which we must never stray from, is that he really IS my Master. I really do belong to him. Oh, not in some sort of slave registry thing. But in a very real internal sense. He really does see into my soul, he knows me, he freed me, his dominance isn't based on tearing me down but on building me up and teaching me to treasure myself the way he treasures me. We don't just "draw heavily on S&M." The power exchange is the foundation for it all. And it was only after years of training, with catastrophes along the way, that the BDSM side of it was solid enough that it became safe for him to connect with me - at times - as a lover and as a friend.

Which is obviously something I haven't made clear enough on the blog.

It is certainly fine for you to speak about us as you have, based on what you have gleaned from my writing. And, in fact, now it really is a love relationship. Now and then, speaking to him, I'll refer to "all the different ways we are together", referring to my being his mistress, his pet, his submissive, his slave, and his own little girl. But eventually that makes him uneasy, and he'll repeat that if we lost sight of the core, we will lose our way and get into trouble.
And he's right.

BDSM isn't something we just DO.
It is not a game.
This is what we are.
Deep inside, in truth, this is what we are.

But there's nothing you've written that reveals anything that should not be revealed. So that's fine.

Where you call him my "Dominant Master" I would just say he's my Master.

What you say about planning and organizing is absolutely true. He does work things out in a very detailed way before each visit and has a long-range plan as well."

Recently, a fellow tweeter told me that the stories that I write are disgraceful. Apparently, I write of sex without love; I write of pain, degradation and cruelty – She hasn’t actually read any of my stories, she just somehow ‘knows’ what they’re like. If I could be bothered to have a dialogue with her, which I cannot do because she has blocked me on all social media, I would argue that my stories are about people who are very much in love – they just happen to have ‘kinks’ and it is how those kinks inform their relationship -- that is what I find interesting.


And that is why I am intrigued by Oatmeal Girl – despite the S&M, her poems and poetic prose are a dedication of her love for the ‘Sadist’, the man she adores – the man who adores her. She is in an all-consuming love affair with the Sadist – without him, she is nothing – without him she would shrivel and die, like the autumn leaves on my magnolia tree -- exquisitely scarlet when they fall, only to turn muddy brown, found in the spring, as thin and fragile as finest tissue paper in their skeletal remains.


You can visit Oatmeal Girl’s blog “Submission and Metaphor” here.

Follow Oatmeal Girl on Twitter. @oatmeal_girl

PORN & EROTICA; ART & ARTSTS

I think a lot about pornography. I’ve written about it too; you’ll probably be familiar with my tweets regaling the powers that be that writers and artists have no clear guidelines on what exactly is pornographic. But am I being fair? One girl’s porn is another girl’s erotica. There is stuff that disturbs me profoundly, but may not affect you one teensy weensy little bit.

Let me say right away that I am not talking about “hard core” porn here. I wish that there were not those horrible images of children on the Web. I wish that the sites could be shut down as soon as they pop up. “Snuff” films too. Sites where people can get off on death and torture; that is not what I am talking
about.

A while back I looked at Aubrey Beardsley’s beautiful pornographic art. Beardsley’s lovely pen, ink and brushwork. His images are graceful; elegant. Yet they do convey humiliation; disgrace and depravity. Tiny naked men with massive erections being farted on by huge women. The image of lascivious Salome speaking lovingly to the severed head of John the Baptist hints at necrophilia. And even more tiny men are dwarfed by their own massive erections.

I get the idea that Aubrey Beardsley was not comfortable in Victorian society. That the Victorians were sexually repressed has been well documented. Aubrey Beardsley delights in showing the hypocrisy of the Victorian era; he made people think, then and now, by poking fun at society and its values. And that made me think again. What about social context? Different eras have different values and standards about what is acceptable and not. So does social context justify pornography? Does Aubrey Beardsley’s clever satirization of Victorian sensibilities and values make pornography okay?


How about the Art of Hans Bellmer?

Die Puppe series 1932


Hans Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz in 1902. Kattowitz was then part of the German Empire (it is now Katowice, Poland) Until 1926 he’d been working as a draughtsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany.

He produced the first doll in Berlin in 1933. Long since lost, the assemblage can be described thanks to photographs that Bellmer took at the time of its construction.

The images show Bellmer's assemblage, made of wood, flax fiber, plaster, and glue, under construction in his studio or arrayed on a bare mattress or lacy cloth. Seductive props sometimes accompany the doll—a black veil, eyelet undergarments, an artificial rose. Naked or, in one case, wearing only a cotton undershirt, the armless doll is variously presented as a skeletal automaton, a coy adolescent, or an abject pile of discombobulated parts. In one unusual image, the artist himself poses next to his standing sculpture, his human presence rendered ghostly through double exposure. Here Bellmer's own body seems to dematerialize as his mechanical girl, wigged, with glass eyes, wool beret, sagging hose, and a single shoe, takes on a disturbing reality.


And what of today? There is so much porn available on the Web it is difficult to talk about it constructively. A lot of porn involves children. The police are vigilant, but find it increasingly difficult to keep up with the demand of sick minds.

We have to talk about the terms and conditions of pornography. I think of the children’s Beauty Pageant industry; it is popular in the US and becoming increasingly popular here in the UK. Children, girls as young as three playing at being mini adults, polished and coiffed. As Melissa Henson argues in her recent CNN.com op-ed, subjecting young girls to child pageants contributes to the sexualizing of 3-year-olds. For example, a recent episode of Toddlers and Tiaras contained footage of a mother dressing up her daughter like Julia Roberts’ prostitute character on Pretty Woman for a pageant. Furthermore, on both shows, parents are often applying layers of makeup and spray tanning their daughters for performances and dressing the girls in risqué costumes that are just part of the show.

Elizabeth Day, writing for the Observer on Sunday 11th July 2010 interviewed Amber age seven.


“They parade in miniature ballgowns, wear false eyelashes and can be as young as five… We venture into the world of mini beauty pageants to meet the young princesses and their pushy parents.


“To all intents and purposes, Amber is a confident little girl with an array of enthusiasms and interests. But it is hard not to notice as she talks that her eyelids are powdered with gold eyeshadow. Her hair has been styled with two sparkly hairclips and she is wearing a pale pink dress studded with fabric flowers. Later, she will show me a certificate she was given for taking part in the Mini Miss UK competition earlier this year. Because as well as being a normal seven-year-old, Amber is also an aspiring child beauty queen.


Did she enjoy entering the beauty pageant? Amber thinks for a second and then nods her head. Will she be entering any more? "Yes." She pauses, a touch uncertainly. "If Mummy told me to."”


The work of Jake and Dinos Chapman is about as shocking as you can get. Children, girls, sexualized and grotesque. Are the artists saying something about childhood and children as a commodity?

"The job of a work of art is to raise questions about its terms and conditions," said Jake Chapman in an interview with Time Out London. "That’s what we do. We present the viewer with a puzzle. We put an injunction on speedy consumption, by refusing to offer a straightforward aesthetic experience. And to defend the integrity of the work, we produce a bit of turbulence that makes it more than a simple sip – of art." Dinos told Time Out, "By the time we die we will have done everything – flower arranging, pottery, origami… We have no signature style; the work is recognizable for its attitude, not its form."

The age at which very young girls are sexualised is becoming younger and younger.

Jake and Dinos Chapman investigate society’s taboos. Their fiberglass mannequins are unsettling and unnerving; they are meant to be. The girls in their distorted poses stare out blankly; their gaze challenging the viewer.

The Chapman’s images are unpleasant; to say that they are not nice is a terrible understatement.The very existence of the mannequins addresses the very heart of human experience and moral behaviour. We don’t know what to think and we flounder. We are repelled. But surely these grotesque mannequins are nothing to
do with us, are they? The girls eyes lock onto our horrified gaze.

“Don’t you dare judge us;” they are saying. “You created us.”


Thanks to Francis Potts for introducing me to the work of Hans Bellmer. Francis can be found at his blog.

and at Twitter. @Francispotts

WRITING BDSM AS A FEMINIST Christina Harding

I am a self-described feminist, yet at the same time, I also enjoy reading and writing BDSM. These two traits seem to contradict each other. On one hand, feminism is about the equality of the sexes, while on the other hand “dominance and submission” is literally in the definition of BDSM. And so, it has been a bit of a grapple for me to figure out how to rationalize these two opposing values.


In this rationalization, I think it’s important to keep in mind exactly what feminism entails. For this, I would like to refer you to this speech given by Emma Watson to the UN:




If you have not yet had a chance to watch this powerful and eloquent speech, I highly recommend it. Ms. Watson perfectly encapsulates my views on feminism. Unfortunately the word “feminism” has become synonymous with “man-hating” and with cold-hearted women who only care about their career. But this is not the integrity of the ideology which feminism stands for. Feminists simply believe that both sexes should be treated with the same respect and privileges. It would be hard for me to list an ideal which I hold closer to my heart.


However, I remember back to when I was as young as seven years old having dreams in which I was a slave being whipped, which I strangely enjoyed. At that time, I didn’t have the understanding or vocabulary to describe this strange joy, but in my later years I came to realize I was experiencing arousal. This type of dream reached an apex for me many years later when I was traveling in Venice, Italy (strangely enough). In this dream I was being gang-raped by three different completely unattractive men. They were practically fully clothed and I was naked. Over the years I’ve learned to have some control over my dreams, and so I manipulated it to make the scenario as vulgar as possible. I woke myself up, soaking wet. I had to go to the restroom to dry myself off. When I woke up the next morning I had completely forgotten the dream, until I discovered I still needed to dry myself off.


At this point, it’s important to backtrack. Both of the stories I have provided have been dreams. The reality of the matter is that truly whipping a slave or gang-raping a woman are horrible crimes which will have lasting effects on the physical and mental well-being of the victim. Nearly ten years ago I was home alone at around 12:30am when a stranger tried to break into my home with the intent of hurting me. Fortunately the criminal was unsuccessful in his ploy, but it left me terrified of being home alone at night. It’s a fear that has lead me to install alarm systems in my home and avoid being home alone at night whenever possible. This close call nearly ten years ago has made me feel uncomfortable in my own home ever since. I can only imagine the impact it would have had if this criminal had actually been successful.


Clearly I become aroused when BDSM graces my dreams, but pushing this line in reality is a completely different matter. However, that’s where the important distinction lies. Dreams, much like fantasies, are not reality. Many little boys love the fantasy of killing a dragon, but if faced with the “reality” of a huge fire-breathing dragon, would probably feel otherwise. This is the same case with BDSM.


There are many authors who refuse to write BDSM because they “know too many people who have been raped.” I completely sympathize and respect this concern. However, I think psychotic men who would actually rape a woman would do so regardless of whether or not they read my work. A man who would do such a thing has a lot of other problems which have little to do with my writing.


Additionally, I personally found I could only truly appreciate my own sexuality when I learned to embrace my desire for the fantasy of BDSM. Finally learning to embrace and express this fantasy originated in the very safe place of reading BDSM. Then it progressed into role-play with my husband. While this may seem more like “reality” the fact of the matter is that I’m in a loving, committed, trusting relationship, and I know that if I ever seriously conveyed any kind of discomfort my husband would stop immediately. This is fantasy because we’re “pretending.” Finally, I continued to explore my thirst for BDSM by writing some of my own in the form of a paranormal erotic novelette, Underneath the Gargoyle. The fact that this is a paranormal novelette couldn’t underscore more the fact that this is a fantasy. Embracing and exploring my love for BDSM has enriched my sex life and strengthened my relationship with my husband.


I am a feminist who also believes that sexuality is an integral part of human existence and a happy marriage. Sometimes fully embracing our sexuality entails accepting and cultivating a desire for BDSM. I write BDSM because I believe enacting our sexual fantasies in a committed, trusting relationship is another way to express our love.


Christina Harding is a pseudonym. She is a guest blogger for Romance at Random of Random House and the author of Underneath the Gargoyle a paranormal erotic series available at Amazon US and Amazon UK

She also blogs at www.christinahardingerotica.blogspot.com and tweets @tinaerotica. Christina is happily married and enjoys reading sexy stories with her husband.

The Pied Piper of Hameln

I love Robert Browning’s poem; THE PIED PIPER OF HAMLYN. I love its lulling rhythms, the chanting, lyrical story that it tells.

I went to Hamlyn some years ago; I walked over a bridge, crossing the River Weser, deep and wide…

I came away enchanted; I imagine most tourists do. At the time I never gave much thought to what happened to the children of Hamlyn. If I did, it was of a Disneyfied version.

But it’s a strange story; a whole generation of kids just disappearing. Has anyone ever asked what exactly happened to the children of Hamlyn? Browning’s narrative poem is based on an actual event. Something went very wrong in that quaint German town, so many years ago.

Jack Marx talks about the narrative poem on his blog. The story of what happened to the children of Hamlyn.

Thursday, July 24, 2008.


“Most of the English-speaking world knows of the Pied Piper from the poem by Robert Browning, which itself was adapted from the tale as told by The Brothers Grimm. The story goes that a flamboyantly-attired troubadour promised to rid the town of its rat infestation, which he did by hypnotising the vermin with his flute and leading them to drown in the nearby river. However, when the townsfolk refused to pay him for his services, the piper took revenge by leading the children of the town to an unknown fate, never to return.

As fairytales go, it’s one of the more ghastly, whose moral appears to be little more than a warning about neglecting bills. But the legend seems based upon a true incident whose exact details have vanished into history, to be subsequently coloured in by centuries of folklorists. What is certain is that there is a town in Germany called Hameln and some children did go missing there sometime in June, 1284, the event so significant the early Hameln statutes measured the passing of time in ‘years after our children left.’


But there’s something about the silence in this tale - an event so terrible it remains forbidden to play music and dancing on a certain street in town, that suggests something more dastardly than an organised change of address took place.


Is it just possible that the fate of Hameln’s children was dealt with the townsfolk’s knowledge, if not necessarily their blessing? Perhaps they were sold, ‘donated’, abandoned en masse, or simply neglected, in a moment later regretted. At very least, they were lost, and nobody wants to be responsible for loss, especially a parent.

Enter the Pied Piper, with his seductive ways and other-worldly appearance. It was he who took the children, and then he vanished, an alien abduction for the Middle Ages. He is an invention, a diversion, and an absolution at once. Browning and the Brothers Grimm were probably closer to the truth than the town scribes - the Pied Piper was not so much a tragedy as a dubious transaction, and the less said about it the better.”


The writer, John Boswell, casts children as a kind of burdensome currency in the Middle Ages. All over Europe, they were frequently left to die in the wilderness, sold into the slave trade, used to pay debts, made to ‘disappear’ en masse so that rivals could be blamed and forced to compensate, or, most commonly, “donated” to the church, the return being relief from that mouth to feed and a promise of spiritual dividends.

The Holy Roman Empire turned something of a blind eye to the moral question of child abandonment, (no surprise there then) its various edicts on the matter seemingly more concerned with maintaining a fluid serfdom than protection of the children.

In 13th-century Spain, for example, it was law that “a father who is oppressed with great hunger or such utter poverty that he has no other recourse can sell or pawn his children in order to obtain food.”  Furthermore…

“...a father who is besieged in a castle he holds for his lord, may, if so beset with hunger that he has nothing to eat, eat his child with impunity rather than surrender his castle without permission of the lord.”

The Pied Piper story seems to have its root in an event that happened on June 26, 1284. Hamelin historian Martin Humberg states that around 1300 a stained glass window was added to the central market church in Hamelin showing "an old figure of a man in coloured clothes and surrounded by a crowd of children." The inscription around this window has been reconstructed and reads:

“In the year of 1284, on John's and Paul's day
was the 26th of June.
By a piper, dressed in all kind of colours,
130 children born in Hamelin were seduced
and lost at the calvarie near the koppen.”

Scholars disagree on the meaning of "the calvarie near the koppen" but most agree that it refers to a place of execution near an as yet undetermined hill. There are many other references to the story in Hamelin itself, including a street named "Bungelosen Strasse," literally "the street without the sound of drums," allegedly so named because dancing was forbidden in that street in memory of what had happened to the children.”

In A World Lit Only by Fire (1992) by William Manchester, Manchester makes a passing reference to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. According to Manchester the piper was a psychopath and a pederast who was involved in some sort of mass child killing. Many of our children's stories are based on real events, many of them sinister and certainly not the type of thing you would want to lull your child to sleep with, but this seems especially grim. Is this true, and if so what's the whole story?

The quote in question comes from page 66 of Manchester's book and reads;
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin . . . was a real man, but there was nothing enchanting about him. Quite the opposite; he was horrible, a psychopath and pederast who, on June 24, 1484, spirited away 130 children in the Saxon village of Hammel and used them in unspeakable ways. Accounts of the aftermath vary. According to some, the victims were never seen again; others told of disembodied little bodies found scattered in the forest underbrush or festooning the branches of trees."

Manchester doesn't footnote this passage and although he does give a long bibliography at the end of the book, the reader can't readily determine where he got it. The official website of the German town of Hamelin makes no mention of it, which is no surprise, since the romantic version of the legend has monetary value and they have an official town "Pied Piper" to this day. Perhaps Manchester got some of the details wrong -- among other things, he appears to be off about 200 years on the date. But he didn't just make the whole thing up.


The legend of the Pied Piper has probably as many variants as it does tellers. The most popular versions derive from the poem by Robert Browning and the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. In pretty much all versions, rats infest Hamelin and the town hires a travelling rat catcher to exterminate them. When he does so, the king, mayor, or whoever decides not to pay him, so he extracts his revenge by spiriting away the town's children.

Taken at face value, the inscription suggests that Manchester was right --130 kids came to a bad end at the hands of a deviant. But there is no corroborating record of any mass execution of children in the vicinity of Hamelin, which would seem to be an important event if it really happened.

The window with the inscription was replaced in 1660 and is now lost, so we're relying strictly on secondary evidence and not much of that. There doesn’t appear to be any factual basis for Manchester's lurid tale of "disembodied little bodies found scattered in the forest underbrush or festooning the branches of trees."

The earliest versions of the tale make no mention of the piper's skill as a rat catcher--that part of the story doesn't show up in literature until about 1550. It appears that the final tale was a mixture of the true story of whatever happened to the children in Hamelin plus various European rat catcher legends. Stories of an itinerant rat catcher similar to the one in Hamelin show up in Austria, France, Poland, Denmark, England, and Ireland. Duke Froben von Zimmern (1556) was the first to put the legends together into the tale we know today. Fifty years later Richard Verstegan was the first to tell the tale in English and introduce the name "The Pied Piper" in his book A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence.

But there is still too much speculation and not enough evidence to say what actually happened to the children of Hamelin in 1284. A typical conjecture might be; the Pied Piper was a charismatic leader who, in the eyes of the ecclesiastical as well as secular authorities, misled a group of young people in a revival of pagan worship. He and his group were therefore captured and killed.

The Black Death has also been mentioned as a possible suspect, although the plague post-dated most of the legends and would have affected adults as well as children. Earthquakes and the Children's Crusade have also been mentioned as possibilities, but are far from convincing.

One currently popular interpretation comes from Jurgen Udolph and focuses on the variant that the children emerged from the cave either in Transylvania or somewhere in eastern Europe. Udolph believes that the phrase "children of Hamelin" should be interpreted figuratively and not literally. He thinks the tale may refer to an eastward migration of people from Hamelin into the area between Berlin and the Baltic. The theory has root in German historian Wolfgang Wann's conjecture that Bruno von Schaumburg, who was then Bishop of Olmutz, recruited some residents of Hamelin to settle in Moravia. This would have happened in 1281, three years before the date in question.

Udolph rejects this particular idea but thinks something along the same lines may have occurred. He uses place names to fortify his speculation, on the theory that people who relocate to a new land tend to name their new homes after the places they came from. Therefore, it should be possible to trace new settlements by establishing the origins of their names. In an article in Time International, Ursula Sautter reports:

"After the defeat of the Danes at the Battle of Bornhoved in 1227, the region south of the Baltic Sea, which was then inhabited by Slavs, became available for colonization by the Germans." The bishops and dukes of Pomerania, Brandenburg, Uckermark and Prignitz sent out glib "locators," medieval recruitment officers, offering rich rewards to those who were willing to move to the new lands. Thousands of young adults from Lower Saxony and Westphalia headed east. And as evidence, about a dozen Westphalian place names show up in this area. Indeed there are five villages called Hindenburg running in a straight line from Westphalia to Pomerania, as well as three eastern Spiegelbergs and a trail of etymology from Beverungen south of Hamelin to Beveringen northwest of Berlin to Beweringen in modern Poland.

Udolph's explanation seems likely. Like most legends, the Pied Piper story probably has its origin in something more prosaic than fantastic.
But the fantastic does make a much better fairy tale.



This blog post has been put together using sources from the Web.

NECROPHILIA; fucking dead people

Necrophilia; it’s a tough one. Is it a fetish or a perversion? What do you think? It’s a strange and disturbing phenomenon. It’s haunting; it’s taboo. But let’s not be squeamish; we’re going to talk about fucking dead people.

Yes it’s tough, but because it’s tough and makes us squirm, that’s not a reason not to talk about it. I think it’s a good reason to talk about it. Google is always a good place to start, so that’s where I went. And going on what you can find on the Web, with just a basic search; there’s a helluva lot of folk, curious and wanting to know more.

Are they all shouting “disgusting” and running away? It seems not; they’re intrigued. Reading about it; writing about it. Yearning for it…

Janine Ashbless writes a great necrophilia story, in Montague’s Last Ride,” in her “Cruel Enchantment.” collection. Jan Vander Laenen writes another great necrophilia  tale in his short story, “The Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty.”

So, necrophilia is there. It’s in the stories that we tell each other, from Classical Greek and Egyptian Mythology, to the Victorian Gothic. It’s in Fairy Tales and it’s in Popular Culture.

In the Greek legend of the Trojan War, the Greek hero Achilles slays the Amazon queen Penthesilea in a duel. Upon removing her helmet and seeing her face, Achilles falls in love with her and mourns her death. The soldier Thersites openly ridicules Achilles and accuses him of necrophilia. Achilles responds by promptly killing Thersites with a single blow. (In some traditions, Thersites' accusation is not unfounded—Achilles was so stricken by Penthesilea's beauty that he could not control his lust for her, even after her death.)

In Egyptian mythology, we are told of the myth of Osiris and Isis. It tells of the god Osiris, who had inherited his rule over the world from his ancestor Ra. Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his jealous brother Set, a god often associated with chaos. Osiris' sister and wife Isis reassembled Osiris' body so that she could impregnate herself and conceive an heir.

So the template for necrophilia is there, in our oldest stories. Mythology gives us permission to explore those dark and secret ideas.

And what about our current obsession with vampire stories? Starting with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, are they not a fantasy about a physical union with the un-dead?

And as for Heathcliffe in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, he sure as hell didn’t dig up Cathy’s body to gaze on her beautiful face.

And there’s so many more. In Cormac McCarthy's Child of God (1973), the protagonist Lester Ballard finds a dead couple in a car, and carries the female corpse back to his cabin to engage in sexual acts with it. After losing the corpse in a fire, he begins murdering women to create dead female sex partners for himself.

Georges Bataille's gruesome novella Story of the Eye ends with the main characters performing perverse and sacrilegious sexual acts on a passive priest, who is raped and strangled to death as he climaxes. After murdering him, the characters continue to perform sexual acts with his dismembered eyeball.

Edgar Allan Poe once described the death of a beautiful young woman to be one of the most beautiful images. (By this, he was not saying that it is a good thing for young women to die; to him melancholy and pain were sources of beauty.) Also, his poem
"Annabel Lee" includes, towards the end, possible necrophilic imagery. As does his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Oscar Wilde's scandalous play, Salome, based on the Biblical story of a Judean princess who performs the Dance of the Seven Veils for the Tetrarch, Herod, in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. When Salome finally receives the Christian prophet's head, she addresses it in an erotic monologue that has highly suggestive necrophiliac overtones.

And coming closer to today’s literature.

In Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon, (1977) Macon Dead is explaining to his son Milkman that he is disturbed by the relationship that his wife Ruth had with her father, Dr. Foster. Shortly after Dr. Foster's death, Macon caught Ruth lying naked in bed with her father's corpse, while sucking on his fingers.

In Canadian author Barbara Gowdy's short story, "We So Seldom Look On Love", a funeral parlour employee learns how to make the penises of recently dead men erect, and she commits sexual acts on the corpses until she is caught. In 1996, the story was adapted into the film Kissed.

Can’t leave out Fairy Tales either. Some Commentators like Marina Bychkova read the story of “Snow White”, as having a necrophiliac theme. Disney has sanitised it, just as he has done with “The Sleeping Beauty.” In a much older version of the story, the handsome Prince doesn’t just kiss the sleeping/dead princess, he rapes her.

From the Web.

“Sigmund Freud maintained that our deep childhood experiences (or lack of them) affect our adult lives in a profound way. In other words, when people are highly functional in their childhood experiences, this mirrors their adult reality, and when adult people are highly dysfunctional as children this, too, mirrors and mars their adult experiences.
There seems to be strong indications to support this concerning necrophilia. The list of necrophiliacs seems to clearly support Freud’s viewpoint. Here is a brief list: Ed Gein, Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Albert Fish, Denis Nilson. All of these personalities had strained strange childhoods, felt abandoned, felt rejected and felt worthless. According to Dr. Jackson it is the perverted and extremely aberrant feelings of loneliness, rejection and abandonment, this feeling of total isolation, and total inability to connect to another human being that propels necrophilia.

As disturbing as this approach might be for some, in a nut shell what is being said here is that the necrophilia evolves to a state where the surest and easiest way to have total control, total acceptance, and total success in relating to another human being tragically descends to the point that the human being which is to be the object of intimacy is, of all things, a corpse.”

From the Web again.


“Erich Fromm, the psychologist and philosopher  considered that necrophilia is a character orientation which is not necessarily sexual. It is expressed in an attraction to that which is dead or totally controlled. At the extreme, it results in hatred of life and destructiveness. Unlike Freud's death instinct, it is not biologically determined but results from upbringing. Fromm believed that the lack of love in the western society and the attraction to mechanistic control leads to necrophilia. Expressions of necrophilia are modern weapon systems, idolatry of technology, and the treatment of people as things in bureaucracy.”

It’s described as “the highest taboo,” worse than rape, paedophilia, bestiality. So what’s going to happen if you do get caught fucking a corpse? The law in the United Kingdom says that fucking a corpse is very definitely illegal.

From Wiki;
“In the United Kingdom, sexual penetration with a corpse was made illegal under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. This is defined as depictions of "sexual interference with a human corpse" (as opposed to only penetration), and would cover "depictions which appear to be real acts" as well as actual scenes (see also extreme pornography).
As of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is also illegal to possess physical depictions of necrophilia, electronic or otherwise. Necrophilia-pornography falls under the governmental description of extreme pornography, of which, possession is classed as illegal under the aforementioned act.”

So in the U.K. you’re not only breaking the sexual offences act law if you indulged your profane urges and fuck a corpse, you’re going to be hauled up for possessing “extreme pornography” as well.

In the United States, there doesn’t seem to be a blanket law covering the whole country. The law varies from state to state. As of May 2006, there is no federal legislation specifically barring sex with a corpse. Here’s a few examples of how the states differ in their application of the law.

In Arizona, It is unlawful for a person to engage in necrophilia. A person engages in necrophilia by:
1. Having sexual intercourse with a dead human body.
2. Having sexual contact with a dead human body, other than the contact normally required to store, prepare, disinfect or embalm a dead human body according to standards of practice in the funeral industry.
1. "Sexual contact" means any direct or indirect touching, including oral contact, fondling or manipulating of any part of the genitals, anus or female breast by any part of the body or by any object.
2. "Sexual intercourse" means penetration into the vulva or anus by any part of the body or by any object or masturbatory contact with the penis or vulva.
F. A person who violates this section is guilty of a class 4 felony.


In California, you can get up to eight years in prison, for the act of necrophilia. In the state of Georgia, you can get ten years in prison, for the same offence. In Nevada it’s considered a Class A felony with a maximum penalty of life in prison.

I still don’t know whether necrophilia is a fetish or a perversion. Certainly the sub-text in the Sigmund Freud statement, and the quote from Erich Fromm, seem to see necrophilia as something that needs to be “cured.”

So I’m lost for a proper conclusion.

How would I feel if a relative of mine who had passed, was “played” with? I would not like it at all. I would be distressed, incensed, livid. But, as I don’t think I’m likely to come across a necrophiliac any time soon, that’s as near to making it personal as I can get.

And not forgetting contemporary literature; Post Mortem by Rose W. Sweetly gentle; a dying woman's last wish. Post Mortem is available at Amazon UK and Amazon US

THE MARQUIS de SADE; JUSTINE

His name is synonymous with the very worst that human beings can be. He plumbs the depths of depravity in his quest for mere titillation; Bad people celebrate his birthday; good people shudder at the mention of his name. He is the Marquis de Sade and I’ve just finished reading “Justine”.

It really is time that I confront de Sade. I call myself a writer of Erotica; indeed, I blushed and trembled with dizzy, giddy pride when the Christian right slammed a “Danger Pornography” notice on my tweets.

But de Sade. He was a French aristocrat, 2nd June 1740—2nd December 1814. A revolutionary politician, famous for his libertine sexuality. His works comprise novels, short stories, plays, dialogues and political tracts. In his lifetime, some were published in his own name, while others appeared anonymously and de Sade denied being their author. He is best known for his erotic works which combine philosophical discourse with pornography, depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence and blasphemy against the Catholic Church. He was a proponent of extreme freedom unrestrained by morality, religion or law. The words ‘sadist’ and ‘sadism’ are derived from his name.

He was incarcerated in various prisons and in an insane asylum for about 32 years of his life. Many of his works were written in prison. His ethos is focused absolutely on pain and pleasure.

“It is always by way of pain that one arrives at pleasure.”


“I have already told you; the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.”

“When she’s abandoned her moral center and teachings…when she’s cast aside her façade of propriety and ladylike demeanor…when I have corrupted this fragile thing and brought out a writhing, mewling, bucking wanton whore for my enjoyment and pleasure, enticing from within this feral lioness…growling and scratching and biting, taking everything I dish out to her…at that moment she is never more beautiful to me.”


“Justine,” with the subtitle, “The Misfortunes of Virtue”, is an extraordinary book. The philosophy is that of the merits of vice vs. virtue. The protagonist (a virtuous woman) falls prey to a series of libertines who use and abuse her in whatever ways they deem pleasurable to themselves.

We join the narrative at the point where Juliette, aged 15 and her sister, Justine aged 12 have been orphaned by the death of, first their father and then their mother. They have been educated at a convent, a private establishment, where they had access to the finest minds of their generation.

Their relatives deliberate about what to do with the two girls.

“Since no one cared to take care of them, the doors of the convent were opened to them, they were given their inheritance and left free to do whatever they pleased.”

They were harsh times.


Juliette is sensitive to the pleasures of freedom, while Justine, with her serious and melancholy nature, is aware of the full horror of her situation. Juliette intends to use her pretty face and beautiful figure to her advantage and become a great lady. Justine is horrified by the course her elder sister intends to take and the two go their separate ways.

The story is told at an inn by “Therese” (the name that Justine adopts for the purpose of the narrative) to Madame de Lorsagne (who is actually Justine’s elder sister Juliette. They do not recognise each other) There is irony, in that Juliette,who went briefly for a life of vice, is now in a better position to do good than Justine, who refused to make concessions and so is plunged further into vice.

Justine’s tale begins. On departing from the Convent and leaving her sister, Justine goes to the house of her mother’s dressmaker and asks to be taken in. She is turned away.

A tearful Justine goes to see her priest. De Sade describes her beauty. A perfect picture of innocence.

“..she was wearing a little white close fitting dress, her beautiful hair carelessly tucked beneath a large bonnet. Her bosom could just be discerned, hidden beneath a few ells of gauze, her pretty complexion a little pale owing to the troubles that weighed upon her. Her eyes welled with tears, making them even more expressive..”

The priest does not have Christ, the Holy Spirit or the Our Father on his mind. He drools over the pretty girl.

“God’s spokesman slipped his hand into her cleavage, kissing her in a manner far too worldly for a man of the church.”


When Justine rebuffs him, he throws her out.


In prerevolutionary France, the Church is corrupt and the rich and powerful can get away with more or less anything; Justine’s ideas on how to live a decent and good life are hopelessly out of time. Her tale follows an odyssey of misadventure as she moves from place to place, determined to lead a good and honest life, but encountering abuse after abuse. Always, she is taken in and promptly imprisoned. She takes refuge in a monastery, hoping to claim sanctuary and it is in the Holy place, inhabited by Holy men that she is degraded, abused and defiled to a hideous extreme; all described in explicit detail. She is witness to, and has inflicted on her, every sexual depravity you can think of. Child sex, rape, sodomy, coprophilia, endless whippings, orgies and multiple partners. Every encounter follows the same pattern, followed by an exercise in, quite remarkable, lengthy sophistry as the lecher explains his own version of the Libertine’s credo with passionate intensity and the certainty of experience. This is in contrast to Justine’s assertions of Christian principles which are expressed pathetically in the moment, stubbornly, and with the certainty of blind faith.


So what does de Sade’s novel offer BDSM today? Does what de Sade describe have any relevance to BDSM as we know it in 2013? Probably not. The world is a very different place, we have different values and different ways of understanding.


I wasn’t expecting to find fun in de Sade’s work, neither was I expecting to find anything like joy, there is certainly no sense of playfulness in any of the sexual acts that he describes. What he does do, I think, is to touch on many common fantasies such as the need for pain, inflicted or inflicting that brings to the foreground the means for some of us to celebrate our sexuality.


Is de Sade onto something when he talks about pain and pleasure? He wouldn’t have known about endorphins; the mysterious little opioid peptides released by the pituitary gland at times of great excitement, pain, stress and orgasm. We only know about that sort of stuff because of 20th century research methods.


A friend, whose sexual orientation is submissive, tells me that the rush of endorphins, when the pain of a whipping is almost too much to bear, is almost exquisite. “Better than morphine…”


Freud wrote about the pain pleasure principle. He understood that ‘something’ happened, he just wasn’t sure what…


“When pleasure and pain occur together, a certain amount of confusion may occur, which itself may be pleasant or painful and hence determine what happens. Simultaneous pain and pleasure is a basis for masochism.”

(Author unknown.)


In The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, Angela Carter suggests that de Sade is perhaps the first writer, and in this respect he is surprisingly modern, to see women as more than mere breeding machines, as more than just our biology.


And that, I think, is liberating.


Perhaps we are wrong to take de Sade so seriously? Is he actually talking about an achievable, or even desirable philosophy? de Sade didn’t just write about sex; he had very serious things to say about life, oppression, equality and power. But he said them in such an uncompromising, aggressive way, laughingly indulging himself in his most extreme fantasies and perversions that we recoil in horror. His particular proclivities have a place in his argument and his refusal to excise them, using them and himself as examples, shows, I think, that he is not lacking in integrity.


Still I’m not happy. Let me just throw this in; something to contemplate. I haven’t looked at intent. What is de Sade trying to achieve with his pen? Is he just a dirty old pervert, masturbating into our faces sniggering and sneering at our self-righteous disgust? Or is he laughing at our naiivity, our inability to see through what could be considered a sophisticated piece of satire?


We are so busy being shocked, we miss the point.



It is neither inappropriate nor inconceivable to interpret de Sade’s work as a biting parody in the same tradition as the satirist Jonathan Swift, or the great satirists of today. How many times have you watched (the show that keeps me sane) South Park, with your gut clenching, cringing, as you wonder how the writers dare put such corrupt words into the mouths of children? Nothing is sacred in the hands of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Even the Sacred are a target. God, Satan, Christ, the Virgin Mary. As is the President, sex, age, sexual orientation, social media, popular culture, child abuse, paedophilia. Nothing is off limits: make up your own list from these scatological writers. With wonderful belly aching laugh out loud hilarity, they prick the bubble of pomposity of anyone who takes him, or herself too seriously; no one is exempt. No one escapes.


We know that it’s funny; we give ourselves permission to laugh as Cartman directs yet another totally anti-Semitic ranting tirade at his Jewish friend Kyle. The writers put into the child, Cartman’s mouth, all of the old nonsense of why it’s right to hate the Jews. There is even an episode where Cartman talks enthusiastically and chillingly about “his final solution.” The Nazi euphemism for the total annihilation of the Jewish people.



Is de Sade’s work a brilliant, way ahead of his time, piece of satire? Or is it gratuitous porn; porn for porn’s sake?


You know what? I still really don’t know!

SEX & DEATH: EROS & THANATOS

It seems a strange notion; a link between sex and death. I think most people would agree, that life's greatest drives are to reproduce and to avoid death. The Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the French social theorist Michel Foucault argued that the two are fused, that the death instinct pervades sexual activity. I’m not sure whom came up with the idea; Eros and Thanatos, Freud or Foucault, but that is the term generally used to demonstrate the concept. Sex and death are inextricably linked.

Our lives seem to be governed by polar opposites. I think it is helpful to think of Thanatos (death) in these terms suggested by Doctor Stephen Farrier.

“But Thanatos (death) is often overlooked. I think of it as the desire for zero excitation - total non desire (which of course is death)."

And, of course, the French have given us the concept of “La petite mort”; “the little death.” A wonderful metaphor for the orgasm.”


In the Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying, the writer suggests that;

“…with the AIDS epidemic their (Freud and Foucault’s) view has become particularly poignant. A 1992 study from Amsterdam, for instance, found that about one in six U.S. soldiers surveyed said that sex without condoms was worth the risk of getting the AIDS virus. A year later a story released by Planned Parenthood counsellor offices in San Antonio, Texas, explained how teenage girls were demonstrating their toughness by having unprotected sex with an HIV-infected gang member. It seems that, for some, sexual desire is intensified in the presence of taboos and boundaries, even deadly ones."



On television, I heard Stephen Fry tell the tale of a young, gay man, being “gifted”. He had anal sex with as many HIV positive men in one night as he could; hoping to get the virus.

Are human beings inexorably drawn to what can damage, or even kill them? Is there really a pleasure in dicing with death?


The Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying again;

“Attempts to enhance one's sexual experiences can be deadly as well. In 1998 the Food and Drug Administration reported the deaths of several men taking the highly popular Viagra impotence pill. Each year, attempts at sexual self-gratification accidentally kill between 500 and 1,000 individuals, predominantly men, because of autoerotic asphyxia. To heighten their sexual orgasm during masturbation, these individuals cut off the supply of oxygen and blood to their head, often by tying a belt or rope around their neck. Consciousness may be lost, and the individual dies by strangulation.”

It seems that the sex drive and the death drive are powerful forces. But hang on a minute, we don’t all take dangerous risks, do we? Surely, most of us live quite sedentary lives. Sometimes life has a way of tripping us up. Someone lets us down, badly. Love may be unrequited. Our own bodies might betray us.


From the web:

“To be betrayed feels like surrendering to a painful process of death, like being forced to experience the pain of abandonment and loss. Each death, however, seems to be a “sacred” process of transferring to new forms of existence. As Carl Jung reminds, the development of personality almost always passes from a deathly sacrifice, and if we manage to process the experience of betrayal and mourning, the result may be transformation.

Betrayal might seem abhorrent to our conscience. Nevertheless, without maturation deriving from the experience of betrayal, we remain trapped in the unconscious, repeated questing of a merger with another person. We remain out of the mystery of life forever. If we never change direction, we refuse to undertake the responsibility of existence as unique and separate entity, because the repetition of the miraculous discovery of the ego, according to Jung, is possible only if rupture takes place in its temporal consistency and in its beliefs.”


In other words, we have to allow ourselves to experience rupture in order to mature and grow. If we don’t, we remain as children for ever.

The Eros/Thanatos equation has not been unnoticed by Artists.

”



Aubrey Beardsley’s ink drawing of Salome, conveys the pivotal moment of the Biblical tale in all its gruesome detail. In a rapture that is indecent in its intensity, Salome gazes at John’s severed head with glutinous glee. Beardsley’s line is perfection. Over a blank white paper he gives us a story that is grotesque, weird, macabre, sinister, in a perverse and playfully theatrical style. Salome clutches at John’s decapitated head, as if she is about to devour it. Beardsley has conveyed the tale in all its erotic glory. Salome is sex personified: John’s death is down to her lust. The viewer is repulsed, feeling that Salome is about to burst with terrible laughter.


Here is the story of Salome from the Bible. Mark 6:21-29:

“And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; And when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist.
And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist. And
the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother.
And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.”






The Belgian artist, Antoine Joseph Wiertz painted a confrontation of Beauty and Death, Deux jeunes filles—La Belle Rosine in 1847. You can see it at the Musée Wiertz, Brussels.

It’s a hauntingly beautiful painting. A lovely, almost naked, nubile young woman stands before a skeleton. The young woman is not daunted by this presentation. Is it a confrontation, or is there a narrative of which the viewer is unaware? I don’t know any stories in mythology that this could have been drawn from; Wiertz is weaving a tale, but I don’t know how to read it. I have the feeling that there is more to this painting than meets the eye. Wiertz’ pictorial language is enigmatic, perhaps hinting at the Surrealist movement that was not to show its face until the following century.

Dissatisfied with the shiny effect of oil painting, Wiertz developed a new technique combining the smoothness of oil painting with the speed of execution and the dullness of painting in fresco. He has used this to effect, in this painting. It gives the work a sombre feel, even ominous. Something is about to happen to disturb the woman’s quiet contemplation. Her head is very slightly tilted, as if acknowledging the skeleton. She could be looking into a mirror, maybe admiring what she will one day become. You would expect her to recoil, yet there is no horror in the young woman’s face, there is even a hint of a small smile.






The Pre-Raphaelite painter, John Everett Millais, gives us the doomed maiden, “Ophelia.” Millais painted the picture in 1852; you can see it in the Tate Gallery, London.

Franny Moyle talks about the painting. “The model is dressed up in Shakespearean reference, it is nevertheless the depiction of a woman committing suicide and an exploration of female sexuality. Ophelia is ecstatic at the moment her life expires. The sexual charge in the picture is heightened by the abundant, competing natural world of the river bank that, portrayed with almost photographic faithfulness, surrounds this woman not only resigned to but aroused by her fate. The depiction of an offering to a greater natural order.




Franny Moyle commentating again. "The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, draws from Tennyson’s poem, a mythical lady, cursed never to look out of her window, chooses to sacrifice her life for a glimpse of Lancelot and then float to Camelot in a barge to face her doom.
In an allegory of sexual longing and capitulation, Waterhouse freezes Tennyson’s story at the moment the lady is about to release the chain that ties her barge. And so he anticipates the abandonment of the rational self to subconscious sexual impulses."

I think that “The Lady of Shalott,” is also at the Tate Gallery, London.



The encyclopaedia of Death and Dying.


“In a 1992 book, Camille Paglia claimed that it was in the West that sex, violence, and aggression are major motivations for artistic creativity and human relationships. There is little doubt that these are qualities of audience appeal. Hollywood has long known of the attractions to the erotic and the violent, which is why 60 percent of R-rated movies and nearly half of X-rated movies contain violence. The long-term success of the James Bond movie series derives from its fusion of sex and death.

"According to Geoffrey Gorer, such seductions derive from cultural pruderies to matters of sex and death. William May observed that as sex becomes pornographic when divorced from its natural human emotions of love and affection, so death becomes pornographic when divorced from its natural emotion, which is grief. Perhaps the pornographic connotation is why designer Christian Dior chose in the 1990s to label one of his perfumes "Poison."”

Thanks to Jan Vander Laenen, Fulani and Doctor Stephen Farrier, for helping me put this essay together. And, of course, sources from the Web.