Creative Nonfiction – July 2019

CREATIVE NONFICTION 57

feel physically ill to read about you
and these men.” I have thought a lot
about this, and here are some tricks
I’ve come up with to get you over the
hump to writing sex.

1. EXPLOIT THE MESSINESS

Don’t simplify the emotional intent
behind your sex scenes. Maybe your
narrator wants to feel loved or make
someone fall in love with her. Maybe
she wants to manipulate her partner or
have an adventure or defy her parents
or make sure that her husband finally
leaves her for good. Or maybe she’s
trying to recapture marital intimacy,
as in Sue Fagalde Lick’s heartbreaking
but funny essay, “Slipping Away,”
about an unexpected vacation from
Alzheimer’s. This essay explores the
messy emotions within the act itself.
The narrator feels giddiness and
sentimentality, anxiety and gratitude,
emotional and physical pain, and
finally love and loss. This essay works
because it’s so emotionally honest. In a
similar way, B. Pietras’s essay, “Secret
Museums,” renders its power from the
conflicting emotions of desire—the
way secrecy and shame create friend-
ship and intimacy.
The concept of sex, and not just
the act itself, can be problematized in
emotional ways ways as well. Anne
Visser Ney’s “Summers of Urchins
and Love” does just this by taking a
broader view and weaving together
biology and evolution, sexual intima-
cy and reproduction, and finally the
loss of a child, showing how human
nature is just one thread in the fabric
of all nature, all life.

2. TALK THE RIGHT KIND OF DIRTY

How would the characters in your
piece (including your narrator) have
described what was going on as it was
happening? If the narrator was saying
(or even thinking), “Fuck me harder,”

and you write it as Make love to me,

you have missed the mark. I’ve heard

people say there are no good ways to

describe sex and genitalia, but actu-

ally, there are lots of ways—every-

thing from edgy, colloquial slang to

scientific jargon to poetic image and

metaphor. The language must reflect

the tone, so if you’re talking about

porn and adolescent boys, as in “Secret

Museums,” words like tea bagging and

hard nipples are the right words.

And if you are writing about

unromantic sex, maybe what’s needed

are the clinical terms or even the

disembodiment of your own body

parts, using the instead of my, as in the

breasts, the thighs, the cunt. Did that last

word make you uncomfortable? If

you’re going to write sex, you’ll have

to get over that and allow yourself the

full repertoire of sex diction. There

are no synonyms; each situation calls

for the correct word, and that word

could very well be cunt.

If the terminology still makes you

uncomfortable, try exploring it the

way Michal Leibowitz does in her

meta-sex essay, “Body Language.” By

repeating the sexual words that have

made her uncomfortable throughout

her life, and in the essay, she comes

to own and even refigure these

troubling words. As writers, we must

be able to own every word—or at

least take them out on loan. Use the

words that suit the tone of the piece,

and understand that this might mean

quieting your inner voice or the

voice of your mother. Be brave and

unapologetic.

3. BREAK STEREOTYPES
   One of the reasons stereotype and
   cliché are bad for writing is because
   they are mostly untrue. Just as I have
   never seen it rain cats and dogs, I
   haven’t been in the presence of an
   actual red-hot throbbing member.
   (Maybe I’m missing something, but I
   don’t think so.) Make a list of all the
   words you would normally associ-
   ate with sex. Then try writing a sex
   scene without using any of these “sex”

words. Make another list, of words

you would never associate with sex,

and use those words in your sex scene

instead. Even if you are writing about

vanilla sex, your language should be

fresh and surprising.

As we’ve heard, everything is about

sex—except sex, which is about

power. Try not to reinforce traditional

power dynamics in your writing. We

see stereotypical representations of

sex everywhere in popular culture,

including my childhood picture book.

Here’s the text that accompanies the

picture of the couple beneath the

colorful quilt: “The man wants to

get as close to the woman as he can,

because he’s feeling very loving to her.

And to get really close the best thing

he can do is lie on top of her and put

As writers, we must be able to

own every word—or at least take

them out on loan. Be brave and

unapologetic.