Germany—in fact, based on global book-sales lists, the entire
world—is abuzz over a novel titled Feuchtgebiete (in
English, Wetlands), by an author named Charlotte Roche. It’s
an erotic novel narrated by an 18-year-old woman with a propensity
toward all things unhygienic. Wetlands will be published in
America next year, but it’s already made news, from the New York
Times to Jezebel.com, Gawker
Media’s feminist blog.
Jezebel’s Jessica Grose translated a few bits of Wetlands and the blog’s commenters have been mortified by these brief, clumsy
passages. The novel’s narrator explains: “I’ve been experimenting for
quite a while with unwashed pussy. My goal is for it to be easily and
seductively smelled through pants, even through thick jeans or ski
pants.” She continues, “I use my own pussy juice the way others use
their perfume bottles. I stick a finger in my pussy and then dab the
slime behind my earlobes. It works wonders when you’re kissing people
on the cheek.”
According to the New York Times, Wetlands begins
with a picturesque description of the narrator’s hemorrhoids and anal
sex. And then, by any number of accounts, it continues with florid
descriptions of every tangy fluid and smelly crease the human body has.
The typical discussion online has to do with whether this book is
indicative of a new anti-glamour-and-deodorant brand of feminism or
simply poor bathing habits. There’s another discussion that this book
prompts, however, and it’s something that publishing should take very
seriously. Roche is quoted in the Times as saying “she wrote
scenes specifically to build up arousal, only to bury them again in the
repulsive.” This means that Wetlands is probably the most
innovative erotic book to be written in a very long time.
It’s hard to come up with totals—Amazon
.com and Barnes
& Noble don’t keep best-seller lists for erotica—but based on
anecdotal evidence, one of the best-selling American erotic books of
2008 is Boink: College Sex by the People Having It. It’s the
book version of a magazine published by Boston University students, and
part of the reason for its success might be that it’s full of glossy,
full-color photos of naked coeds. But Boink praises itself far
too much; an editor’s note says, “We felt that it was important to keep
it real and to provide something for everyone; guys and girls,
straight, gay, and bi,” and while the book does have some gay prose in
it, there is no man-on-man action in any of the photos. There are a few
spreads with men by themselves on pristine beaches, and some other
demure photos of men and women in sexual positions. And in true
collegiate fashion, there are plenty of photos of classically
attractive young women (without silicon parts, it’s true, but still
skinny, mostly long-haired, and incredibly femme) making out, but it
seems to be framed in the traditional lesbian-until-graduation sort of
masculine-approved bisexuality.
And when one gets bored with Boink‘s pictures and starts
reading the allegedly erotic stories, it becomes clear that this could
just as easily be your parent’s sex writing, poorly written and loaded
with clichés. “We lay there for a while, panting, unable to move
or speak,” ends one encounter. One penis pounds like a “jackhammer” and
in another story a woman is brought “to a shuddering climax.” People
done with sex “collapse in a sweaty pile.” There is not one original
thought in the entire book.
A sure sign that erotica isn’t as sexy as it used to be is the fact
that it’s been co-opted by political causes. Stephen Elliott, the
author of the fairly sexy short-story collection My Girlfriend
Comes to the City and Beats Me Up, recently edited an anthology
called Sex for America, subtitled Politically Inspired
Erotica. Some of the stories are intentionally unsexy—Jerry
Stahl’s story is about sodomizing Dick Cheney—but many of the
others seem to aim for excitement and fall far from the mark. James
Frey has a story about a man fucking a senator’s wife that’s as boring
as most of the writing in My Friend Leonard: “He uses his
lips, tongue, and fingers, uses them to give her a taste of herself.
When he’s done, he mounts her and gives her a taste of himself.”
There are those who will say that erotica by its very definition
should be the home of cliché, and that there are only
so many different ways to have sex. Mathematically, they’re correct, of
course—there’s a limited number of inputs, outputs, and limbs
that can possibly be involved. But sex is always as different as the
person you’re having it with, and erotica should reflect that. The
people who have pigeonholed themselves into only reading erotic fiction
about, say, blond Australian yodel champions who are into S&M,
water sports, and humiliation are only sexually cheating
themselves.
And people who would call disgust and eroticism (à la
Wetlands) an unnatural combination completely lack any sense
of historical perspective. Revulsion is always the emotion that comes
before a new erotic barrier is smashed, from the older generation’s
anger at cohabitating unmarried couples in the 1960s to the mindless
Bible-waving at homosexuals today. There’s always a wave of nausea in
the public sphere before acceptance, possibly a reflection of the fact
that virgins, no matter how hard they try to convey calm, are seldom
blasé in the moments leading up to their first time. (I have a
friend who, in blind terror, vomited on his first lover.)
Erotica used to be the home of literature’s outlaws, from the
Marquis DeSade to Georges Bataille, Anaïs Nin to Kathy Acker.
Their writing ignited strange new hungers in the minds of their
readers, and created an entirely new vocabulary for people to talk
about their desires. Until Roche’s book, it had been years since anyone
brought something new to the field, and as much as people may be
disgusted by the very idea of Wetlands, the book has been
nothing less than an electric shock to the fleshy bits of a genre that
was as dumbed down and overmarketed as its older sister, the romance
novel. 
i like pussy juice slim on ur ear.it is very cool.